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LI BR A^OF CONGRESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






















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Bread in the Desert, 



AND 



OTHER SERMONS. 



BY 

RANDOLPH H. MCKIM, D. D., 



RECTOR OF TRINITY CHURCH, NEW ORLEANS. 



apr 4 my't 



3«;^G 



NEW YORK: 
THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 AND^ BIBLE HOUSE. 
I88 7 . 



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Copyright, 1887, 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER. 



JTrankltn press: 

RAND AVERY COMPANY, 
BOSTON. 



I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 

IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MY 

UNSPEAKABLE OBLIGATIONS TO HER 

TEACHING AND EXAMPLE. 



PREFACE. 



/ give these sermons to the press in obedience to the 
wishes of my late parishioners of Holy Trinity Church 
{Harlem), New York, — whom it was my privilege to 
serve for eleven years, — in the hope that they may be to 
them a pleasant memorial of our common work for the 
Master, and an enduring testimony to the truths of His 
Gospel, which knit together the hearts of Pastor and 
People in a bond which no changes of time, or place, or 
circumstance, can sever. 

X. H McK. 

Trinity Rectory, New Orleans, 
March 3d, 1877. 



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CONTENTS 



SERMON x PAGE 

I. Bread in the Desert i 

II. "Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 18 

III. "Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 31 

IV. Design in Nature 48 

V. The Silence of God 62 

VI. The Knowledge of God y$ 

VII. "Rest for the Weary" 90 

VIII. The Co-operation of God and Man in 

Salvation 109 

IX. Secret Prayer 128 

X. The Government of the Tongue . . . 140 

XI. Christianity the Religion of Humanity, 154 

XII. A Plea for Total Abstinence .... 169 

XIII. Christians the Light of the World . . 189 

XIV. The Function of Pain 206 

XV. The Fatherhood and the Family . . . 222 

XVI. The Vision of the Throne 234 

XVII. The Transfiguration 248 



SERMONS. 



i. 

BREAD IN THE DESERT. 

" And the angel of the Lord came . . . and touched him, and said, 
Arise and eat ; because the journey is too great for thee" — I Kings 
xix. 7. 

OF all the figures upon the scene of Israelitish 
history, the grandest and most romantic is 
that of Elijah the Tishbite. He divides with 
Moses the wonder and the glory of the old dis- 
pensation, and with Moses appears on the Mount 
of Transfiguration to witness, in the face of Jesus 
Christ, the surpassing glory of the new. He is 
at once the worker of miracles and the beneficiary 
of them. To-day he is fed by ravens, to-morrow 
the widow's oil and meal are multiplied for his 
sake. At his word the heavens refuse their rain 
for three long, dreary years. And, again, in 
answer to his prayer, there is a sound of abun- 
dance of rain. The lightnings leap from the 
clouds to do his will — now to consume the sacri- 



''Bread in the Desert. 



fice in attestation of its acceptance with Jehovah, 
now to punish the presumption of an idolatrous 
king. Even Death yields up his prey to the 
resistless power of Elijah's prayer. 

But he is more than a wonder-worker. It is as 
a moral hero that he claims our deepest reverence. 
His courage is equal to his faith ; and when the 
appointed time has arrived, he issues from his con- 
cealment, goes straight to the king, who for three 
years has been hunting his life, and denouncing 
him as a guilty rebel against Jehovah, faithless to 
his trust as head of the people of God, bids him 
summon all Israel to meet him on Mount Carmel. 
The despotic monarch quails before Elijah, and 
obeys his word. The prophet's mantle asserts its 
superiority to the royal purple ; and in that scene 
on Carmel, one sees that the real king is not Ahab 
with his pomp and power, but Elijah, the solitary 
hermit of the desert. 

Such is the figure of the great prophet, — majes- 
tic, commanding, awe-inspiring. But the chapter 
from which our text is taken shows us a very dif- 
ferent manner of man. But yesterday the victo- 
rious reformer of Carmel, alone defying king and 
court, army and priesthood, strong in faith to 
vindicate the honor and authority of Israel's God, 
and in his fiery zeal executing the sentence of 
death on the eight hundred and fifty prophets of 



Thread in the Desert, 



the false and filthy worship of Baal and Ashta- 
roth — to-day he is a fugitive from Jezebel's ven- 
geance, disheartened and disappointed, broken in 
spirit, his courage and his faith totally eclipsed. 
He has fled to the southern border of Judaea ; and 
from thence he goes alone, a day's journey, into the 
great white desert, and, sitting down under a juni- 
per-tree, begs, in the bitterness of his spirit, that he 
may die, saying, "It is enough ; now, O Lord, take 
away my life ; for I am not better than my fathers." 
Exhausted by long fatigue and intense excitement 
and grief, he wraps himself in his mantle of skin, 
and falls asleep there in the lonely desert under 
the juniper-tree. "And as he lay and slept . . . 
behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto 
him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, 
there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse 
of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, 
and laid him down again. And the angel of the 
Lord came again the second time, and touched 
him, and said, Arise and eat ; because the journey 
is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat 
and drink, and went in the strength of that meat 
forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount 
of God." 

This remarkable scene is suggestive of several 
reflections, upon which it may be profitable for us 
to dwell. 



"Bread in the Desert. 



i. The first and most obvious is, that the holiest 
of men are not exempt from periods of spiritual 
depression and declension. Elijah at Carmel 
seems removed from us at an unattainable height, 
far above our experiences, — a hero of the faith too 
exalted for imitation. But Elijah here in the des- 
ert is a man of like passions with us. He who 
had shut and opened heaven by his faith, now 
loses faith ! He who had so sublimely trusted 
God, now gives way to fear and despondency and 
despair ! He who had been such a hero in the ser- 
vice of Jehovah, now loses heart, and weakly asks 
to die ! 

Now, such an example as this is profitable, be- 
cause it shows us that it is no strange thing if we 
sometimes pass through similar periods of spiritual 
depression. Any one, even the best and bravest 
servant of Christ, may suddenly find himself in the 
valley of humiliation, walking in darkness, because 
faith is temporarily eclipsed. Let him not count it 
a strange thing, an exceptional experience. It is 
even the less strange if, like the prophet, he has 
just been mounting up, as with the wings of the 
eagle, into a lofty region of faith and zeal. (The 
law of re-action — partly physical, partly mental — 
explains many experiences of spiritual depression.) 
But chiefly such a man learns that the mightiest 
champion of the faith is mighty only " in the 



'Bread in the Desert. 5 



Lord." The holiest saint or seraph is holy only so 
long as he abides in Christ. Like the fabled 
Antaeus, who received new strength every time he 
touched his Mother Earth, and whom Hercules 
could only overcome by lifting him from the ground, 
the servant of Christ is invincible so long, and only 
so long, as he leans upon his God and Saviour. 
Such experience of depression and declension as 
befell Elijah in the desert may be first the conse- 
quence, and then, by the mercy of God, the cure, of 
dependence on self. Of both of these truths, there 
could be no more impressive illustration than is 
furnished by the narrative before us. 

2. But, if this scene in the desert is suggestive 
on one side of human weakness and frailty, much 
more does it emphasize on the other hand the di- 
vine help which is never far from the people of ' 
God. We have here a vivid illustration of the old 
and trite adage that " Man's extremity is God's op- 
portunity." Even at the darkest hour of danger, 
distress, or temptation, God is near His faithful peo- 
ple. At the very lowest point of Elijah's depres- 
sion, when his faith had suffered eclipse, and when 
the sense of failure had overwhelmed him, lo, God's 
angel is at hand to strengthen and encourage him 
for his journey. 

Human life, my brethren, is full of experiences 
which are essentially, though not externally, simi- 



"Bread in the Desert. 



lar to those of the prophet in the desert. I will 
not stay to seek for historical parallels : they 
will suggest themselves to every student of his- 
tory, — parallels to Elijah's loss of faith, as 
when Archbishop Cranmer fell from his greatness, 
like a star from heaven, and made his cowardly 
recantation for fear of the English Jezebel ; or as 
when Henry of Navarre and the Prince of Conde 
escaped the fury of Catherine de Medici by abjur- 
ing the Protestant faith : parallels to the deliver- 
ance which came to Elijah, as when our great 
reformer recovered his courage and his fortitude, 
and atoned for his weakness by his heroic constancy 
at the stake, holding in the flames till it was con- 
sumed the hand which had signed the recantation, 
and exclaiming, " This unworthy hand ! this un- 
worthy hand ! " I will not stop to speak of these, 
but will rather cite examples from common life. 

Here is a faithful man of God, standing in his 
lot, preaching Christ and Him crucified from one 
year's end to the other, faithfully bearing witness 
to the truth as it is in Jesus. He is alone, he is 
discouraged, he is cast down, and it seems to him 
that his life is a failure ; for though his character 
stands like a strong pillar conspicuous in his com- 
munity, and though his pure example shines like a 
beacon before men, his work is not surrounded 
by the aureole of success : he is one whose life 



"Bread in the Desert. 



is his only eloquence, and whose holiness is his 
only success, — a man such as he of whom it was 
written, " He was content to let other men quarrel 
about Christianity : it was enough for him to live 
it." Such a man I see discouraged, cast down, 
ready, like Elijah, to ask of God to take away his 
life from the deep and crushing sense of failure. 

Or, perhaps, it is a public-spirited citizen, who, 
filled with a disinterested devotion, has given his 
time and his energy and his capital to schemes for 
the enlightenment and welfare of his fellow-men ; 
but, to all appearance, he has labored in vain. He 
meets with little or no response ; his plans are not 
understood, his sacrifices are not appreciated, his 
motives even are misjudged ; the public cannot rise 
to his exalted point of view, cannot sympathize as 
yet with the nobility of his aim ; and so, at last, his 
brave and unselfish soul is cast down with a sense 
of failure, and, like the prophet, he sinks into de- 
spondency and despair. 

Or, again, it is a father or a mother who has 
striven, by precept and by prayer, by example and 
by sacrifice, — leaving no stone unturned, no effort 
untried, — to guide into the paths of virtue and of 
religion a wayward son, who is dearer than life. But 
all to no purpose : his boyhood and youth are past, 
manhood is reached, yet no tokens are seen of any 
fruitage of so much parental labor ; he is a prodigal 



8 Thread in the Desert, 

still, feeding his soul upon husks. And so, again, 
you see the servant of God lying under the juniper- 
tree in the desert, discouraged, depressed, disheart- 
ened, ready even to cry, with the prophet, " It is 
enough ; now, O Lord, take away my life." 

Or, let me take my illustration from this congre- 
gation here present. I may speak to some who 
have honestly striven to lead a godly and a Chris- 
tian life, and to use their influence and their talents 
for the promotion of God's glory, but who feel that 
they have labored to no purpose. You have a sense 
of isolation. Men have misunderstood you, and 
held aloof from you, and so your sacrifices seem all 
in vain, and your work a failure. 

There are multitudes of such cases, of such dis- 
couragements, which come to faithful men and 
women treading the dusty highway of this desert 
of Time. Now I would, by God's grace, bring to 
every such man a message of encouragement and 
strength. I would say to such, Let this scene in 
the desert, the faithful servant, the fearless champion 
lying there under the juniper- tree, cast down and 
disheartened, feeling that he is alone, and that God 
has forsaken him, assure you that it never has been 
true that any faithful man or woman who has tried 
to serve God, and to follow Jesus Christ, and to live 
for the truth, — it never has been true that God 
has forgotten him or forsaken him. Brethren, sue- 



"Bread in the Desert. 



cess is not the test, either of character or of truth. 
God forbid ! Or, what is the same thing, the worldly 
measures of success, or even the ecclesiastical meas- 
ures of success, are not the measures whereby the 
eternal and invincible God, who looketh upon the 
heart, and not upon the appearance, judges. In 
fact, it is a very poor thing for us to labor for suc- 
cess : let us rather labor for the truth, let us labor 
for Christ and His holy cause, leaving the question 
of success or failure entirely to God. Let us be 
content to do our duty. Robert E. Lee said well, 
" Duty is the grandest word in the English lan- 
guage." Let us be content to do our duty in that 
state of life to which it has pleased God to call us, 
— to speak for the truth, to labor for the truth, to 
live for the truth, and, if need be, to die for the 
truth, whether men will hear, or not, whether 
we are surrounded by applauding multitudes, or 
whether we feel, like Elijah, out in the desert 
alone. 

John Stuart Mill, in that masterly treatise of his 
on Liberty, says, "The dictum that truth always 
triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant 
falsehoods which men repeat after one another, till 
they pass into commonplaces, but which all experi- 
ence refutes ;" and he goes on to give historical in- 
stances in which truth, instead of triumphing, has 
been trampled under foot. But, brethren, while 



io Thread in the Desert. 

truth may be trampled to the dust for a while — for 
a generation — forages — truth must triumph in 
the end, for 

" Right is right, since God is God, 
And right the day must win : 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin." 

Let us therefore believe that although we may not 
succeed in planting the banner of truth upon the 
ramparts of the foe, nevertheless no blow ever 
struck for the truth, in the fear of God, has been 
struck in vain. And, moreover, we are never alone. 
Elijah thought he was alone, thought he was de- 
serted, thought there was none to stand by him in 
his extremity; and so he seemed, a fugitive in the 
wilderness, fleeing from a woman's vengeance. 
There he lies under the juniper-tree, exhausted 
by fatigue : but, while he thinks himself alone, the 
air is filled with the angels of God all around him ; 
and one of them, commissioned from on high, 
touches the sleeper, and awakes him, and shows 
him that God has made provision for his wants, 
even there in the desert. Men and women, par- 
takers with me of this mortal nature, partakers with 
me of the cares and temptations and difficulties of 
life, how often is it true that we feel depressed and 
discouraged because we think God has forgotten us ! 
But it is not so : we are never alone, — never in any 



"Bread in the Desert. 1 1 

work for God, never in any testimony for the truth, 
never in any battle for the right, never in any suf- 
fering, any sacrifice, are we, or can we be, alone. 
There was One who was alone : there was One who 
suffered all alone, misunderstood, despised, rejected 
of men, even His own chosen disciples entirely un- 
able to appreciate Him, or understand His ministry 
or His mission. Jesus Christ was alone ; but be- 
cause He was alone, and because He trod the 
winepress alone, — the winepress of human sorrow, 

— for that very reason no servant of Christ ever 
has been, or ever can be, alone. The apostle says, 

— and says, oh, so truly ! — " Who shall separate us 
from the love of Christ ? Tribulation, or distress, or 
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or 
sword ? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more 
than conquerors. . . . For I am persuaded, that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is 
in Christ Jesus our Lord/' And the humblest and 
lowliest and weakest servant of Christ is as dear to 
His heart as even so great an apostle as St. Paul. 
It was an angel's voice and an angel's touch which 
waked Elijah, and showed him the provision for 
his comfort and refreshment ; and, brethren, angels' 
voices sound in the gospel of Christ, and angel 



12 Hread in the Desert. 

ministries are connected with it. An angel an- 
nounced His coming, another angel brought the 
story of His birth on the wonderful night to the 
shepherds on the hills of Judaea ; and lo, the heavens 
suddenly burst forth with song and with light, 
as the angels strike their harps to the hymn, 
" Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good 
will toward men." And Jesus teaches that He 
Himself fulfils in His own person and ministry the 
ideal of that ladder that Jacob saw, the bottom of 
which rested on the earth, and the top of which 
reached to heaven, and on which the angels of God 
were continually ascending and descending in their 
ministries and messages of mercy to man. Jesus 
Christ, then, is to us the medium whereby the min- 
istry of angels is secured for His people, so that even 
in this respect there is a parallel between the gos- 
pel of Christ and its provision of mercy, and that 
scene that occurred in the desert, when the angel 
touched Elijah, and awoke him to see that God had 
spread a table for him in the desert. 

" Still through the cloven skies they come, with peaceful 

wings unfurled, 
And still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary 

world. 
Above its sad and lowly plains, they bend on hovering 

wing, 
And ever o'er its Babel sounds the blessed angels 

sing. 



"Bread in the Desert, 13 

i 

O ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending 

low, 
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and 

slow, 
Look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the 

wing ! 
Oh, rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing ! " 

3. But my text is suggestive of another truth of 
wider application : Man needs spiritual food to fit 
him for the journey of life. Elijah had before him 
a long journey on foot through that terrible des- 
ert, a journey of two hundred miles. Roots and 
berries were the only support that he could expect 
to find, and these were not sufficient to sustain 
even his iron frame, accustomed as it was to ex- 
posure and hardship ; and so as the Lord had given 
manna to His people in that desert, now again He 
provides angels' food for the support of His ser- 
vant. And the angel touched him, and said, 
"Arise and eat ; because the journey is too great 
for thee." 

Now, it is not far to seek to find a parable in 
this of the great truth that man, being a spiritual 
being, requires spiritual food, — a food which is 
not sold in the marts of this world, which is not 
found in the gardens of pleasure, or in the porches 
of science, or philosophy, or literature, or in the 
arena of ambition, or even in the enchanted groves 



14 "Bread in the Desert. 

of love, but is given by God only, in the person of 
His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ is that 
spiritual food. Christ is that spiritual provision 
for the wants of our humanity which meets every 
requirement and every longing of the soul, and 
which alone meets them. Men and brethren, be- 
lieve me, the journey of life is "too great " for you 
without this spiritual food that God has provided. 
I care not how strong and sturdy you may be ; I 
care not how self-reliant ; I care not how eager to 
face the difficulties and to overcome the dangers 
that encompass you ; there can be no question of 
the fact, that the journey of human life, with its 
temptations, with its cares, with its anxieties, with 
its sorrows, is too great for thee. The roots and 
berries that this desert world affords are not suffi- 
cient to sustain thee. Neither in pleasure, nor in 
ambition, nor in any of the occupations that inter- 
est and stimulate the human mind, is there to be 
found a supply of that which the soul needs, — 
needs most deeply. There is a longing in every 
human heart after perfection, which finds its fulfil- 
ment only in God. There is a cry out of every 
human life for rest, which finds its answer only in 
God. There is a yearning after the perfect and 
the ideal in every human soul, no matter how sin- 
ful it may be, that finds its satisfaction only in 
God. Sometimes this hunger of the soul becomes, 



Bread in the Deseti. 15 



oh so strong! sometimes this thirst of the heart 
becomes, oh so consuming! There is nothing 
that can meet, nothing that can satisfy it, save the 
love of God, realized in Christ Jesus our Lord ; and 
I am here in the name of God to point to the 
divinely made provision for human salvation, and 
for the supply of these wants of the soul, — the 
provision made in Jesus Christ, — and to say to 
you, as the angel said to Elijah, " All things are 
ready: arise and eat; for the journey is too great 
for thee/' 

In Correggio's great picture of the Nativity, in 
the Dresden gallery, the darkness is illumined, and 
every figure on the canvas made visible, by the 
light which flashes from the face and brow of the 
infant Christ. Such is human life : all is dark- 
ness and tangle and mystery until the light shines 
forth upon it from the face of Him who was born 
in Bethlehem, and of whom the angel said, " Call 
His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from 
their sins. ,, This is the promise of the Gospel. 
And the proof follows hard upon the promise. 
Jesus Christ cries, "I am the light of the world ;" 
and presently you see Him proving the truth of this 
claim, by opening the eyes of the blind. He cries, 
" I am the bread of life ; " and presently you see 
Him realizing this promise, by feeding the famish- 
ing multitude in the desert. He cries, " I am the 



1 6 Bread in the Desert. 

good shepherd ;" and presently you see Him stoop- 
ing to lift up the fallen woman, who crouched in 
tears at His feet, and giving her rest and absolution 
and peace. He cries, " I am the resurrection and 
the life;" and presently you see Him standing by 
the grave of Lazarus, and summoning the dead to 
life again. And though our eyes have not looked 
upon these miracles in the physical sphere, though 
we have seen Him do none of these wondrous 
works, have we not seen Him work miracles in the 
spiritual sphere? Have we not seen Him give light 
to those who were in moral darkness, and call out 
of the graves of sin and vice those who were lying 
dead in trespasses and sins ? In other words, have 
we not seen the promises which He makes to the 
world realized in many a heart, and in many a life, 
and in many a home ? 

Oh for a touch of the angel's hand to-night, to 
awaken the sorrowing sleepers on this desert of 
time, to see the heavenly feast of love and grace 
provided for them in Christ Jesus our Lord ! 

Brethren, mine is only the faltering tongue of 
a sinful man, and the untutored touch of one like 
yourselves : but at least I can speak to you as 
one who has felt the same need that you feel, who 
has confronted the same difficulties by which you 
have been perplexed, who has been tried and 
tempted in the same pathway that you are tread- 



Bread in the Desert. iy 



ing, and who has found in Christ deliverance and 
rest and spiritual refreshment; and, therefore, I 
can perhaps press this truth upon you with as 
much success as though it were not my touch, but 
the touch of an angel from God, that was laid upon 
you to awaken you to feel your need of the salva- 
tion that is in Christ. God grant it of His infinite 
mercy ! 



II. 



"WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS 
COMING?" 

u Where is the promise of His coming ?" — 2 Peter iii. 4. 

jKrst German. 

THIS, the apostle tells us, would be the question 
of the " scoffers " who should come "in the 
last days." This has been the question wherewith 
ungodly and unbelieving men have, these eighteen 
centuries and more, taunted the Christian Church. 
The Nazarene bade His followers expect to see His 
" sign " in the heavens, heralding His second com- 
ing with power and great glory ; and when He 
ascended into heaven, angelic messengers (so the 
story runs) gave assurance to His disciples that 
" this same Jesus who is taken from you into 
heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have 
seen Him go into heaven." 

Accordingly we find that this expectation of the 
second advent was cherished with ardor and con- 
stancy by the early Christians. It formed part of 
the warp and woof of the preaching of apostles 
and evangelists. It entered into the very centre 
18 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 19 

and substance of the faith once delivered. They 
kept in mind the words of their Master, "Let 
your loins be girded about, and your lights burning ; 
and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their 
lord, when he will return from the wedding; that 
when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto 
him immediately." They remembered the solemn 
parable of the ten virgins and the warning it 
contained to watch for the coming of the Bride- 
groom, that they might be ready to go out and 
meet him, at whatever hour he might come. 
When they preached to the heathen, and warned 
them to turn from their idols, and " to serve the living 
and true God," they failed not to add, as a part of 
the Christian faith and calling, " and to wait for His 
Son from heaven." When an apostle poured out 
his devout thanksgiving to God for the progress of 
his converts in holiness, he named, as the crown 
of all their gifts, or, at least, as the condition of 
their attainment, that they were "waiting for the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." He can ask for 
his children in the faith nothing higher than this : 
"The Lord direct your hearts into . . . the pa- 
tient waiting for Christ." He can suggest no 
mightier instrumentality for raising men to a sober, 
righteous, and godly life than this, that they should 
look for " that blessed hope, and the appearing of 
the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus 



20 " Where is the Promise of His Coming? " 

Christ." Lying in a Roman dungeon, and expect- 
ing speedy execution at the hands of the tyrant, he 
cheers himself by the hope of a "crown of right- 
eousness " at the hands of the Judge, which shall 
be given, however, not to him only, but to all that 
"love His appearing." 

And not " the blessed and glorious Paul " only, but 
all the apostles and early Christians, pointed their 
hearers to the heavens, and bade them expect the 
coming of the Son of man. We " look for " and 
" haste unto " " the coming of the day of God," ex- 
claims St. Peter ; and St. Jude, in his brief letter, 
makes constant allusion to the day predicted by 
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, saying, " Behold, 
the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints." 
St. John, too, in his old age, when the crown of 
martyrdom was waiting for him, writes to the seven 
churches, " Behold, He cometh with clouds ; and 
every eye shall see Him, and they also which 
pierced Him." To crown all, the canon of the 
New Testament closes with the promise of the 
Lord Jesus, " Surely, I come quickly," and the fer- 
vent response of His waiting Church, "Even so, 
come, Lord Jesus ! " 

Such was, and such indeed has ever been, the 
attitude of the Church of Christ. Above the din 
and tumult of the changes and conflicts of centuries 
has risen ever the voice of her steadfast confession 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 21 

" I believe in Jesus Christ . . . Who suffered 
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and 
buried : He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on 
the right hand of God the Father Almighty: From 
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead." 

Meanwhile the stream of time has flowed on un- 
interruptedly, and the scroll of human history has 
steadily unfolded itself from generation to genera- 
tion until nearly nineteen centuries have run their 
course ; yet still the sign of the Son of man is not 
seen, nor the sound of His approaching chariot- 
wheels heard. And so the scoffer rises up, and 
asks with scorn, " Where is the promise of His 
coming ? " He points, as St. Peter predicted he 
would, to the uniformity of natural law as a ref- 
utation of the hope and expectation of the Chris- 
tian Church. "See," he cries: "unchanging order 
reigns in nature. i All things continue as they were 
from the beginning of the creation/ Where, then, 
is there any room for the great catastrophe which 
you expect ? Experience has shown that this ex- 
pectation is a dream and a delusion." 

What answer have we to this question ? — which 
indeed is not asked only by the scoffer, for it finds 
an echo in many a Christian heart, perplexed by the 
long delay in the realization of the ideal of Christ's 
kingdom, and in the fulfilment of the promise 
of the second advent. 



22 " Where is the Promise of His Corning?" 

There is an incident in our Lord's life which will 
help us to an answer. After the transfiguration in 
which Moses and Elias had appeared with Jesus 
in glory, the disciples came unto Him, saying, 
" Why say the scribes that Elias must first come ? " 
He answered, "Elias is come already, and they 
knew him not. ,, "Then the disciples understood 
that He spake unto them of John the Baptist." In 
other words, the great prophecy of Malachi with 
which the Old-Testament canon closes — " Behold, 
I will send you Elijah the prophet before the com- 
ing of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" — 
met its fulfilment in the mission and ministry of 
John the Baptist, the young prophet of the desert, 
who came clad in the austere guise which the great 
seer of Carmel had worn, and whose whole work 
was "in the spirit and power of Elias." 

And yet John himself when asked, "Art thou 
Elias ? " answered, " I am not." Our Lord, too, 
implies the same thing when He says, " Elias truly 
shall first come, and restore all things." And a 
due consideration of the words of Malachi — which 
connect the coming of Elias with the great and 
dreadful day of the Lord, the Day of Judgment — 
will show that the mission of John does not ex- 
haust that prediction, — does not complete its ful- 
filment John, therefore, was Elias, and yet he was 
not. He was Elias in spirit and in power. He 



" Where is the Promise of His Corning?" 23 

x 

was not Elias in person. He fulfilled the words of 
Malachi, but only in part. They yet await their 
final and complete fulfilment. 

Now apply the principle here exemplified to the 
second advent of Christ, and you have at once an 
answer to the question, "Where is the promise of 
His coming ?" Christ is come already, and they 
knew Him not. The promise has already been ful- 
filled. Howbeit, it yet awaits its final and complete 
fulfilment, when He shall come in person. Of that 
glorious advent, indeed, men scoffingly ask, " Where 
is the promise of His coming ? " But we hold that 
" the Lord is not slack concerning His promise ; " 
— and surely a scientific age ought to be the last to 
dispute the position. Of this we shall speak on a 
future occasion. To-day we confine ourselves to 
those partial fulfilments at which we have hinted. 

Now, the eye of faith, if it scan attentively the 
history of the Christian era, will find certain great 
crises when the Son of man has come " in spirit 
and power/' though not in person. 

Such a crisis was the siege and destruction of 
Jerusalem, prophesied so fully by Himself, and 
realized in such appalling scenes of anguish as 
perhaps the world had never witnessed before. 
The long-gathering storm of the divine wrath 
burst then upon the guilty nation. The judgment 
long treasured up by a series of rebellious acts was 



24 "Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 

at last poured out upon that wicked generation. 
Titus was the Imperator of the Roman armies 
which shut in the devoted city as with a wall of 
glittering steel. But a greater than Titus ordered 
the course of events. The Son of Man presided 
over the storm-cloud which broke at last in fury, 
and swept away with its destroying might, city 
and temple and polity. It was a time of judg- 
ment, and Christ was the Judge. It was a time of 
revolution, far-reaching in its results, profound in 
its significance for the future of the world and the 
race ; and Christ was He whose hand guided its 
course. The windows of heaven were opened, and 
the fountains of the great deep were broken up. 
A destroying deluge was on the land ; and out of it 
was to emerge a New Earth, a New Civilization, a 
New History, — in short, the regeneration of Society 
and Man. 1 

And as in this, so in other great critical pe- 
riods of history. Men ask, " Where is the prom- 
ise of His coming ? " We answer by pointing 
to the conversion of the Roman Empire, when 
"the sign of the Son of man " was seen, if not in 
the heavens, in that bright cross which, according 

1 Strangely enough, the Jews themselves had a legend to that effect : 
" He came, according to another wild legend, on the day of the destruction 
of Jerusalem, but was suddenly carried away, to be revealed at His proper 
time." 



"Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 25 

to the legend, gave to Constantine his omen of 
victory, yet most certainly in the famous Edict 
of Toleration and in the submission of the Roman 
eagles to the symbol of Christianity. We answer 
again by pointing to the victories of the cross over 
the Northern barbarians, which signalized the next 
great advance of the religion of Jesus, when the 
torrent which swept away the last bulwarks of 
the Roman Empire was subdued and calmed by 
the voice of the Son of man, — as of old on Gennes- 
aret, under the mighty spell of the same voice, the 
winds ceased, and the waves were still. We answer 
yet again by pointing to the humiliations which 
befell the Church when, forsaking the precepts of 
her Lord, and forgetting of what spirit she was, 
she armed herself with the pomp and power of this 
world, and leaned upon an arm of flesh, only to 
provoke the judgments of that same Jesus whom 
John saw in Patmos, whose eyes were as a flame 
of fire, and whose feet like unto fine brass as if 
they burned in a furnace, and out of whose mouth 
went a sharp, two-edged sword. 

"Where is the promise of His coming ?" We 
answer once more by pointing to the throes of the 
great Reformation period, when, heralded by a new 
John the Baptist, announced by the voice of a new 
Elijah in the persons of Grossetete and Wickliffe 
and Cobham and Huss and Luther and Tyndale, 



26 " Where is the Promise of His Corning?" 

the Son of Man, "the Messenger of the cove- 
nant/* " suddenly came to His temple," — came 
"like a refiner's fire and like fullers soap," came 
and sat "like a refiner and purifier of silver/* pur- 
ging away the dross of long-accumulating corrup- 
tions, both of doctrine and of morals, and once 
more making His house an house of prayer for 
all nations. 

"Where is the promise of His coming ?" My 
brethren, if you read the history of the last hun- 
dred years aright, you will not lack an answer. 
Did He not come in the eighteenth century, in that 
great awakening which swept over England like 
the life-giving wind over the dry bones of the 
valley, when again the Lord came to His temple, 
sending as His forerunners that goodly company 
of reformers which sprang out of the bosom of 
the Church of England, — Whitefield and Wesley, 
Grimshaw and Romaine, Hervey and Fletcher and 
Venn, Wilberforce and Law ? 

And has He not come again in our own time 
in that great movement of missionary zeal and 
labor, which, beginning in that little cloud no bigger 
than a man's hand which was first seen about the 
beginning of this century, has grown and spread 
till it has poured its refreshing showers over a vast 
area of our earth ? Yes : again Elijah has prayed, 
and again the Lord has answered ; and the result 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 27 

has been a wider diffusion of the gospel, accom- 
panied by more signal victories than at any previous 
period of the history of the Church. While we, 
grown lukewarm and unbelieving under the influ- 
ence of the cares and riches and pleasures of this 
world, and forgetting (alas ! ) that self-sacrifice and 
the cross are the necessary conditions of true dis- 
cipleship — while we, I say, are discussing the evi- 
dences of Christianity, and, in the weakness of our 
faith, trembling for the result of the great conflict 
with the unbelief of our time, the Son of man is actu- 
ally claiming "the heathen for His inheritance, and 
the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. " 

These are only examples — and they feebly traced 
in outline — of the truth which I would enforce. 
All modern history is full of illustrations of it. 
The centuries since Christ have heard the voice 
and seen the sign of the Son of man, not once or 
twice, but many times. 

The rapt seer of Patmos Isle saw in vision a 
scroll-book " in the right hand of Him that sat on 
the throne;'' it was "written within and without," 
— i.e., it contained a completed record ; and it was 
" sealed with seven seals," — i.e., it was full of mys- 
tery, dark and difficult of comprehension. 

That book seems to have been the history — the 
completed history — of the providential govern- 
ment of the world, as it shall stand when the con- 



28 " Where is the Promise of His Coming? " 

summation of human history shall have filled up 
the last blank on the mighty scroll. It rests in 
the hand " of Him that sitteth upon the throne ; " 
because He, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, 
holds all events in the hollow of His hand, and by 
His providence directs the evolution of history. 
But, ah, it is a sealed — a seven-sealed — book. 
Who can loose the seals, and open the scroll, and 
decipher its contents ? The voice of the " strong 
angel " resounds over the wide earth, and down the 
long corridor of the ages, and through the mighty 
vault of heaven, — but in vain. " No man in heaven, 
nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to 
open the book, neither to look thereon/' Yes, the 
philosophy of human history mocks us like a mirage 
of the desert. God's ways are dark; His providence 
is a seven-sealed mystery ; and we might sit down 
and weep, like the seer in the vision, because no 
man can break its seals for us, and decipher its 
contents. We might, had not "the Lion of the 
tribe of Judah" " prevailed to open the book and 
to loose the seven seals thereof." But He — by 
His cross and passion, by His precious death and 
burial, by His glorious resurrection and ascension, 
and by the coming of the Holy Ghost — has won 
the victory which enables Him to open and read 
the book for us. Christ and His cross, my breth- 
ren, loose the seven seals of the history of God's 



■' Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 29 

providence, which is the history of man. They 
will at last explain all its riddles, and unravel all 
its mysteries, and clear up all its dark and difficult 
problems ; and the universe shall ring with the 
loud acclaim of praise of angels and redeemed 
saints, and of every creature in it, when the Lamb 
of God shall take the book, and open the seals, and 
display before all eyes the beauty and the order of 
human history in its onward march to its final goal. 
Meanwhile, we may learn, with Johann von Miiller, 
that the cross of Christ is the key to the interpre- 
tation of history ; and, as we study it more and 
more diligently, we shall reverently discern in 
many a period " the sign of the Son of man." We 
shall see that He has come, not the second time 
only, but many times, to the world and to the 
Church, and that His great promise has fulfilled 
itself in many ways. 

Nor will we stop here. We will study the book 
of our own history. Ah, how often this is indeed 
a seven-sealed scroll to us ! and how vainly do we 
seek to loose the seals thereof, that we may read its 
meaning ! Of this, too, we shall find the key only 
in Christ and His cross. A docile and humble 
spirit, reverently asking the interpretation of the 
closely-written scroll of human experiences, will 
find here, too, — in sorrows, in afflictions, in losses, 
in bereavements, — "the sign of the Son of man," 



30 " Where is the Promise of His Coming? " 

and in many a lurid cloud of earthly disappoint- 
ment discover the symbol and omen of moral vic- 
tory — even that victory "which overcometh the 
world/' And when men scornfully ask, " Where is 
the promise of His coming ? " our heart will an- 
swer, "Ah, He has fulfilled it many times to me, 
and each time He has left a blessing, whether He 
came in sunshine or in storm ; and at last, He will 
gloriously fulfil His promise, coming in the guise 
of the angel of Death, and receiving me unto Him- 
self, that where He is, there I may be also." 



III. 



"WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS 
COMING?" 

" Where is the promise of His coming? " — 2 Peter iii. 4. 

THIS question expresses, on the one hand, the 
scorn of an unbelieving world, mocking at the 
hope of the Church ; and, on the other, the per- 
plexity of the Church herself, as she counts up the 
long cycles of time since the promise was given, 
and scans the eastern heavens in vain to dis- 
cover "the sign of the Son of man." 

I showed you last Sunday where to look for an 
answer to this question, and a solution of this per- 
plexity. You were reminded that the promise of 
the coming of Christ, like that of the coming of 
Elijah, though it looked ultimately to a personal 
advent, did not look only to that, but fulfilled 
itself mediately in the evolution of human his- 
tory. And certain great crises in the course of 
the centuries since Christ were pointed out as 
instances of the fulfilment of the great promise, 
when the Lord Jesus did come again, not indeed 
in person, but "in spirit and power." 

3 1 



32 " Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 

Such a view as this throws a flood of light upon 
the page of history, while at the same time it 
teaches us to look reverently for " the sign of the 
Son of man/' and for the revelation of His power 
and glory, not merely in the consummation of all 
things, but all along the course of human affairs. 
From this stand-point we shall see Christ " fulfil- 
ling Himself in many ways" in the past history 
of our race. We shall recognize His Hand in the 
events of our own time, 1 and we shall expect to 
discover the unfolding of His purposes in the future 
evolution of the great drama of history. Thus the 
promise will belong at once to the past, the pres- 
ent, and the future. "By divers portions, and in 
divers manners," the Lord Jesus has already come. 
He is coming to the world and to the Church, not 
doubtfully, in our own time, if we have discern- 
ment to see His " sign." He will yet come, in the 
near or distant future, working out His vast and 
far-reaching plan for the regeneration of society 
and of man. 

But is this all that the promise implies ? Does 
this view, important and pregnant as it is, exhaust 
the meaning; of the second advent ? 



1 Four centuries after Christ, the Talmudist says of the Jewish hope 
of Messiah what might be truly said of the Christian hope of the advent, 
— " He is even now sitting among the poor and wounded at the gates of 
Rome, and men know Him not." 



" IV here is the Promise of His Coming? " 33 

No, for the angel said that He should "so come 
in like manner as " He was seen to go into heaven ; 
and we know that that was an objective fact occur- 
ring in the sphere of the physical and external 
world. We know also that He shall come in such 
wise that " every eye shall see Him, and they also 
which pierced Him." With the early Christians, 
then, we look for a visible, personal advent of 
Jesus Christ to our earth, — the antithesis of the 
Incarnation ; not in weakness and " great hu- 
mility," but "in power and great glory;" not to 
suffer, but to reign; not to be despised and re- 
jected, but to be worshipped and glorified ; not 
to make reconciliation on a cross of agony, but to 
dispense final justice from a throne of glory. 

But when we make this confession, immediately 
there rises the old question, "Where is the prom- 
ise of His coming?" For all these long centu- 
ries of the Christian era have passed away, and 
still He comes not. Surely, " The Lord is slack 
concerning His promise ! " Time itself seems to 
mock the Christian's hope. The Church has been 
standing gazing up into heaven well-nigh two 
thousand years, and saying, " Come, Lord Jesus ; " 
but to what purpose ? Its experience has been 
similar to that of the prophets of Baal on a mem- 
orable occasion : there has been " no voice, nor any 
that answered." And, moreover, Nature seems to 



34 " Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 

declare the fundamental unreasonableness of any- 
such crisis or catastrophe as the Christian Church 
anticipates ; for " all things continue as they were 
from the beginning of the creation." The stars 
have quietly moved on in their vast cycles ; the 
sun has run his daily course unwearied ; the tides 
have ebbed and flowed ; seed-time and harvest, 
winter and summer, have continued in their per- 
petual round ; the whole grand system of Nature 
has remained steadfast and unchanged in its ever- 
recurring succession. 

The objection — or perhaps I should say the 
difficulty — is, you perceive, twofold. One phase of 
it we may call the historical difficulty ; the other, 
the scientific. 

Let us take these in their reverse order, and 
seek a solution of them. 

I. The Scientific Difficulty. — This would require 
a separate treatment ; and it is not my purpose to 
try to meet it in this discourse, but I may hint 
at the line of thought in which the answer is to be 
found. 

So far as the objection relates to the delay of the 
second advent, it would seem that, in a scientific 
age like the present, it should least of all have 
weight. For the history of the earth, as related 
by geology, and the history of the cosmical system, 
as related by astronomy, present periods so vast, 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 35 

that the eighteen hundred years, during which 
Christianity has been evolving its work among 
men, shrink into utter insignificance in the com- 
parison. Certainly, the man of science, above all 
other men, should recognize the utter inadequacy 
of human standards of time as measures of the 
development of the plans of the Creator. 

And, again, so far as the objection relates to 
other aspects of the subject, such as the regularity 
and immutability of natural law, which, it is alleged, 
forbid any such catastrophe as the end of the 
world, I suggest, — 

First, That creation is the fundamental fact on 
which all our knowledge rests. Science is com- 
pelled to admit the beginning of the Kosmos. 
The very principle of evolution, which, in some 
form or other, is now generally adopted as a twin 
generalization with gravitation, carries with it the 
idea of a beginning. Even if the Kosmos had 
been self-evolved, the seed out of which it evolved 
itself must be assumed. But does not this suggest 
that it is working toward an end ? an ultimate solu- 
tion ? 

I suggest, secondly, that the three leading ideas 
involved in the second advent, and that which is 
associated with it, at least in perspective, the end 
of the world, find clear analogies in the latest 
theories of science. 



36 " Where is the Promise of His Coming? " 

{a) The second advent involves the idea of the 
inauguration of a higher stage of life and being for 
man, — emancipation from old fetters, the ascent 
to a higher plane, the taking on a new body with 
new powers, and under new and higher condi- 
tions. But this is just in the line of the story 
which science is telling us — whether in astronomy, 
or in geology, or in natural history, or in sociology, 
— the several spheres in which the law of evolu- 
tion is traced. We meet everywhere the same law 
of progress, from the lower to the higher, from the 
simple to the complex, from the imperfect to the 
more perfect. Nature, through all geological time, 
the evolutionist tells us, struggled slowly upward 
to reach its final term in man. Her motto would 
seem to have been, " I press toward the mark/' 

(b) The second advent involves the sudden man- 
ifestation of the Son of God, and a new birth of 
the world resulting from it. 

But, again, the scientific man at our side teaches 
us that the ascent of matter and force to higher 
planes, though indeed in orderly succession, has 
not been by infinite gradation as upon a sliding 
scale, but always by paroxysms. The story of the 
chemist is a story of successive births of force into 
higher and higher forms, the transformations of 
dead into living matter, of physical into chemical 
force, and again of chemical into vital force. These 



" IV here is the Promise of His Coming? " 37 

are all instances of sudden births into higher con- 
ditions, with new properties and powers which 
could not have been imagined before. 

(c) The second advent — or that great event 
which, in the perspective, is contiguous with it, 
though in reality it may lie far beyond it (like two 
distant peaks, which seem to spring from the same 
base, though a wide valley really intervenes) — in- 
volves also stupendous natural phenomena, — the 
regeneration by fire, the new heavens and the new 
earth. 

But here again the analogy of science is in har- 
mony with the scriptural revelation ; for the geolo- 
gist, in telling of an internal treasure-house of fire, 
as well as the astronomer in his theory of "plane- 
tary old age," clearly establish that harmony. And, 
moreover, if there is a law of conservation of force, 
there is also, as its antithesis, a law of dissipation 
of energy. To use the language of a living sci- 
entist, " All scientific speculations on the subject 
of the final destiny of the Kosmos bankrupt na- 
ture. The final result is " the running down of all 
forms of force into heat, and the final equal dif- 
fusion of this heat, and so the final death of the 
Kosmos." z 

II. The Historical Difficulty. — Christ promised 
to come again in person to judge the world. He 

1 Le Conte, Princeton Revieiv, 1878, p. 802. 



38 " Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 

said, "Behold, I come quickly." But He has not 
come. Long cycles of history have rolled round, 
yet still He comes not. 

Now, how do we meet this objection ? Exactly 
as St. Peter met it when he made this epistle ; 
viz., by reminding the objector that with the Lord 
"a thousand years are as one day." He is the 
strong and patient worker. Men are impatient. 
They say, as of old they said to the prophet, — 
" Where is the word of the Lord ? let it come 
now" (Jer. xvii. 15); or as to Ezekiel, " The days 
are prolonged, and every vision faileth " (xii. 22) ; 
or as to Isaiah, " Let Him make speed, and hasten 
His work, that we may see it : and let the counsel 
of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, 
that we may know it ! " (v. 19). To this unbeliev- 
ing impatience, the voice of the prophet answered 
of old, "The vision is for the appointed time, and 
it hasteneth to the end, and it deceiveth not : 
though it delay, wait for it ; for it will surely come, 
it will not tarry" (Hab. ii. 3). 1 And before him 
the Psalmist rebuked this profane cavil, when he 
exclaimed, " Lord, . . . before the mountains were 
brought forth, and Thou gavest birth to the earth 
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, 
Thou art God. Thou turnest man to dust ; and say- 
est, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand 

1 See Translation of Benjamin Davies, Ph.D., LL.D. 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming? " 39 

years in Thy sight are as yesterday when it is past, 
and as a watch in the night" (xc. 1-4). And the 
voice of Elihu is to the same purpose: " Behold, 
God is exalted in His power : who teacheth like 
Him ? . . . Remember that thou magnify His work, 
which men celebrate ; all men look at it ; man 
beholdeth it afar off. Behold, God is great, and we 
know Him not, nor can the number of His years 
be searched out. . . . Stand still, and consider the 
wonderful works of God. . . . Teach us what we 
shall say unto Him : we cannot order our speech by 
reason of darkness. . . . Touching the Almighty, 
we cannot find Him out" (Job xxxvi. 22-26; 
xxxvii. 14, 19, 22, 23). * 

This is the witness of Scripture concerning the 
ways and the works of the Almighty. It does not 
stand alone. The voice and the verdict of history 
are to the same effect ; for this historical objection 
finds its answer and its refutation in history itself. 
Whether we study the record of races or of civil- 
izations, the conclusion is the same, — that the God 
who orders the course of history does indeed 
reckon " a thousand years as one day/' maturing 
His purposes through long tracts of time, and re- 
fusing to hasten His work in obedience to the 
impatience of men. Great nations are not born 
in a day ; strong civilizations are not the product 

1 See Translation of Benjamin Davies, Ph.D., LL.D. 



40 "Where is the Promise of H's Coming?'' 

of a generation ; both are rather the resultant of a 
combination of forces and influences whose origin 
must be sought in remote antiquity. 

Take the great ruling races of modern Europe 
to-day, — the English, the German, the French, 
for instance. Their growth to power and high 
intellectual vigor runs through many centuries. 
Their infancy must be sought in the remote period 
when the fierce tribes of barbarians broke in upon 
Europe from the north, and devastated the Roman 
Empire ; their adolescence covered hundreds of 
years ; their maturity is hardly more than now 
attained ; their old age may yet be many genera- 
tions in the future. 

What is true of nations, is even more true of 
civilizations. These, both ancient and modern, 
have attained their full development only after the 
lapse of vast periods of time. The roots of our 
modern civilization strike down beneath the re- 
motest ages. Judaea and Greece and Rome, and 
even Egypt and Chaldaea, contributed each their 
share of influence to its development. Christi- 
anity nourished and stimulated it, and first gave 
it vigorous growth. 

Judging, then, from the analogy of history, what 
should be the case with Christianity ? Here was 
a new spiritual kingdom set up on earth, designed 
to be as wide as the world, and as universal as 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 41 

man. How would its results be reached ? Surely 
we should expect that such a design could only be 
wrought out through long cycles of time; — or, at 
least, this is certain : leaving out of view what could 
be done (for who shall limit the power of the 
Almighty ?) if experience shall prove that the 
kingdom of Christ is to establish itself slowly and 
through long ages of development, this is only 
what the analogy of history would lead us to 
expect. 

Christianity came into the world, a new social 
and moral force, generating a new civilization. If 
we are to judge by the analogy of other social and 
moral forces, and other civilizations, we should 
expect it to ask thousands of years for maturing 
its work. Indeed, the words of its founder sug- 
gest such a method of development. The king- 
dom of heaven is like unto leaven which slowly 
permeates the whole mass. Again, " The kingdom 
of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, . . . 
which indeed is the least of all seeds : but when it is 
grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becom- 
eth a tree, so that the birds of the air come and 
lodge in the branches thereof." When, therefore, 
men ask, "Where is the promise of His coming? " 
we answer by pointing to the open page of history, 
— the history of races and of civilizations, — and 
showing how, in both, the plans and purposes of 



42 " Where is the Promise of His Coming \? " 

the eternal Jehovah have moved to their goal 
through centuries and cycles of slow develop- 
ment. 

We answer again by pointing in particular to 
the history of the Jewish people. What a record 
is that ! — centuries of training in Egyptian bond- 
age ; a generation of trial and discipline in the 
wilderness of Sinai ; centuries again of alternate 
triumph and humiliation in the Land of Promise ; 
then a long exile and captivity under Chaldsean 
and Persian masters ; then a partial restoration to 
their own land, chastened and humbled by their 
reverses ; then long vassalage to Grecian rule, and 
a wide dispersion through the centres of Grecian 
life ; then the fierce persecution of Antiochus, fol- 
lowed by successful rebellion and the re-establish- 
ment of the kingdom under the Maccabees ; finally, 
the Roman dominion and influence. And all this 
checkered experience of the nation through these 
sixteen centuries had a purpose and a meaning. 
Jehovah was training and educating His people by 
these varied experiences, and under these diverse 
influences, in preparation for the gospel. The Jews 
were to be the educators of the world. Jerusalem 
was to be the fountain of a new civilization. In 
Zion was to be laid the foundation of a new king- 
dom, which was to realize the dream of a universal 
empire ; only the kingdom was to be spiritual, and 



' Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 43 

the empire was to be in the hearts of men. Judaea 
was to produce a Peter, a Paul, a John ; and such 
fruit was worth all those centuries of education, 
for those men were to be the benefactors and 
illuminators of the whole human race. We point 
to all this as additional evidence of the method 
of the divine working, and as a reason for checking 
the presumption which carps at the long delay of 
His promise. 

Once more we point to the record which the 
page of sacred history contains of the promise 
of the first advent of the Messiah, cherished with 
undying tenacity, with inextinguishable hope, by 
a nation of people through all the reverses and 
trials of their wonderful history, — a promise which 
was coeval with the earliest traditions of history, 
which was reiterated again and again, yet for forty 
centuries received no literal fulfilment. Here was 
a case in which the scoffers might say, with even 
greater show of reason, " Where is the promise of 
His coming ?" But at length in the fulness of 
time it was fulfilled of a truth in the Incarnation 
of the Son of God. 

Looking at this, we feel no difficulty in the 
delay of the second advent, and no perplexity in 
the question, " Where is the promise of His com- 
ing ?" but confidently anticipate the fulness of the 
time — whether it take ten years or ten thousand 



44 " Where is the Promise of His Coming? " 

years to ripen — when the Son of man will come 
the second time according to His word. 

But does not this slow ripening of the great 
periods of history and civilization, while it removes 
the difficulty occasioned by the long delay of the 
second advent, create at the same time a presump- 
tion against the manner of its inauguration ? The 
Scripture picture represents a sudden event, a 
great crisis and catastrophe in the history of the 
world, in the second coming of Christ. But this, 
too, finds its frequent analogies in history. The 
records of mankind afford instances not a few of 
great crises in the history of cities and nations and 
races, when sudden destruction has overtaken 
them, when the long pent-up clouds of wrath have 
burst upon them, and swept them away from 
among the families of the earth. Such was the 
case with Nineveh and Babylon. Such was the 
case with Accad, a city which was older than either 
of these, which was indeed the cradle of civiliza- 
tion, but which so utterly disappeared, that its ex- 
istence was not even known forty years ago, and 
was only brought to light by the discovery of the 
key to the arrow-headed characters, in which the 
story of the Accadians, with their laws and litera- 
ture and religion, had remained securely locked up 
for more than three thousand years. Such was the 
case with Jerusalem, which, when it had filled up 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 45 

the measure of its guilt, perished in that sudden 
storm of indignation and wrath, tribulation and 
anguish. Such was the case with the Roman 
Empire, when it sank to rise no more before the 
devastating flood of the Northern barbarians. Sim- 
ilar examples are not wanting in modern history, 
illustrating the principle in question, and giving 
ground for the assertion that the analogy of his- 
tory is in harmony with the prophecy that the Day 
of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, — a 
Day of judgment and indignation and wrath to 
those who are disobedient and rebellious against 
the Son of God, but a Day of Redemption to 
all them that wait for His appearing. 

In conclusion, brethren, let me say that if our 
eyes are illumined by faith, we shall study the 
great scroll of history under the conviction that it 
is not a mere fortuitous congeries of battles and 
sieges and tumults, a mere record of the rivalries 
and conflicts of races and dynasties, without any 
organic unity, and without any deeper meaning 
than appears on the surface, but that it is the un- 
folding of a divine plan, the evolution of a divine 
order, proceeding on a definite principle, and mov- 
ing to a definite end. We shall indeed be far 
from being able to loose all its seals of mystery, or 
to interpret all its dark enigmas. But in Christ 
and His Cross, we shall have the key to its inter- 



46 '" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 

pretation ; and more and more as we study it, it 
will take form and proportion as a great providen- 
tial order. It will be like some splendid statue, 
which is slowly unveiled before our eyes ; and as 
the veil is gradually lifted, from the feet upward, 
and the harmony of its proportions and the beauty 
of its idea revealed, we shall perceive that the 
sculptor who has fashioned it throughout is none 
other than God Himself. 

We shall see, moreover, that all history before 
Christ was one long course of education and prepa- 
ration for His first advent, and that all history 
since Christ has been likewise a preparation for 
His second advent. And, as we watch the slow 
unfolding of the great scroll, we shall look for the 
evidence of a fuller preparation, till the time shall 
be ripe for His coming. Meanwhile we shall re- 
member that we have each our part to do in the 
work of preparing the way of the Lord. The tiny 
coral insect toils on beneath the sea, giving not 
only his labor, but his body, to build up the island, 
which at length appears above the surface, and 
becomes a site for cities and a centre of civiliza- 
tion. So may each of us, in our humble sphere, 
contribute to the great work which is silently going 
on in preparing the world for the second coming 
of Christ ; and if our eyes see Him not when 
He comes, we shall at least have the satisfaction 



" Where is the Promise of His Coming?" 47 

of knowing in death that we have done something 
towards the upbuilding of the new earth, which 
shall be the home of righteousness and peace. 

Or, if so be that the Son of man come in our 
time, then shall we hail His coming with joy, say- 
ing in the words of the prophet, to which we have 
listened this morning, " Lo, this is our God ; we 
have waited for Him, and He will save us : this is 
the Lord ; we have waited for Him, we will be glad 
and rejoice in His salvation " (Isa. xxv. 9). 



IV. 
DESIGN IN NATURE. 

" That which may be known of God is manifest in them ; for God 
hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead" — 
Romans i. 19, 20. 

ANOTHER, and probably more accurate, ren- 
dering of St. Paul's words here is as follows : 
" The knowledge of God is manifest within them ; 
for God manifested it to them. For since the 
creation of the world, His invisible attributes are 
clearly seen, being understood by means of . His 
works, even His eternal power and divinity." 

St. Paul here declares two things, — first, that 
the knowledge of God is innate in man, " written 
on his heart ;" and second, that this knowledge 
or consciousness of God is developed (called out 
of latency into patency, out of quiescence into ac- 
tivity) by the contemplation of the works of God 
in creation. He asserts, moreover, that this 

knowledge takes a definite form in a clear per- 

48 



Design in Nature. 49 

ception of certain of the attributes of God. The 
visible creation, he declares, clearly manifests the 
eternal power of Him that created it ; that is, it 
exhibits a power which is not only vast and 
colossal, but plainly superhuman, supernatural, 
"eternal" To all this the apostle adds a further 
assertion, which must not be overlooked. The 
works of creation, in revealing the eternal power, 
also reveal the "divinity" of their author. They 
testify not doubtfully or obscurely to the reflecting 
mind of man, that the hand which framed them is 
divine. 

These assertions of St. Paul, I need scarcely 
say, are not peculiar to him, or to the writers of 
the New Testament, or to the Sacred Scriptures. 
Very similar statements are to be found in pagan 
writers. To give a single example out of many, 
Cicero declares (Tusc. Disp. I. xiii. 30) that no 
tribe of men has ever been known, however fierce, 
however savage, whose mind has not been imbued 
with some conception of the Deity : wrong ideas of 
God, he says, are indeed common, but all have 
some notion of a divine power. And he adds 
(29) that in the most primitive state of man, 
this knowledge of God is derived from the in- 
structions of nature, — natura admonente cogno- 
verant. 



50 Design in Nature, 



Passing from pagan writers to those Jewish 
writers whose productions, though not included 
in the canon, are yet read occasionally in our 
churches, as containing venerable and salutary 
lessons of conduct, — I refer, of course, to the 
Apocrypha, — we find a remarkable parallel to this 
passage of the Christian apostle, in the Book of 
Wisdom : " Surely, vain are all men by nature, 
who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the 
good things that are seen know Him that is : 
neither by considering the works did they ac- 
knowledge the work-master. . . . Let them know 
how much better the Lord of them is : for the first 
author of beauty hath created them. But if they 
were astonished at their power and virtue, let them 
understand by them how much mightier He is that 
made them. For by the greatness and beauty of 
the creatures proportionably, the maker of them is 
seen." 

It is not, however, until we open the Sacred 
Scriptures that we find this consciousness of God 
in Nature developed in its highest degree. The 
Book of Psalms, for example, is redolent with the 
thoughts expressed here by the apostle, and radi- 
ant with passages of sublimest imagery in which 
they seek utterance. The Psalmist could read the 
image and superscription of the great King upon 
the whole circle of physical phenomena : when he 



Design in Nature. 5 1 

sees the sun rising over the Mount of Olives, and 
gilding all the towers and minarets of the Holy 
City with glory, he exclaims, "Thou makest the 
outgoings of the morning and evening to praise 
Thee." "The day is Thine, and the night is 
Thine: Thou hast prepared the light and the 
sun. Thou hast set all the borders of the earth." 
When he gazes up into the blue vault above him, 
and contemplates its grandeur, he cries, " The 
heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firma- 
ment sheweth His handywork." "Magnify Him 
that rideth upon the heavens as it were upon an 
horse ; praise Him in His name JAH, and rejoice 
before Him :" "Who sitteth in the heavens, over 
all from the beginning." When he looks out upon 
the sea over which a storm is sweeping, he breaks 
out into this sublime strain of adoration: "It is 
the Lord that commandeth the waters ; it is the 
glorious God that maketh the thunder. It is the 
Lord that ruleth the sea ; the voice of the Lord 
is mighty in operation ; the voice of the Lord is a 
glorious voice. The voice of the Lord breaketh 
the cedar trees ; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars 
of Libanus. . . . The Lord sitteth above the 
water-flood, and the Lord remaineth a King for- 
ever." 2 

1 Ps. lxv., lxxiv., Ixviii., xxix. Prayer Book version. 



52 Design in Nature, 



So far I have only stated the fact that the be- 
lief of mankind has corresponded with the dicta of 
St. Paul in this passage. 

But it may be asked, Is there no reason to be 
given for this fact ? Is there no proof of the 
dogmas of the apostle ? It is not enough to know 
that the pagan philosophers said so and so, or that 
the Jewish apocryphal writers gave a similar testi- 
mony, or that the Hebrew psalmists wrote sublime 
poetry founded on the same conceptions ? Men in 
our time are asking a reason for every opinion 
and for every doctrine. What reason, then, is 
there for the assertion that the eternal power and 
divinity of the Creator are manifest to man in the 
physical phenomena of the universe ? 

I answer, that the universe, whether considered 
as a whole, or in its separate parts, gives unmis- 
takable evidence of intelligence and design, of the 
adaptation of means to ends, of the correlation of 
forces, of a marvellous proportion in its structure, 
so that the more closely it is studied, and the more 
deeply its phenomena are pondered, the more 
clearly is it seen that the great forces, which are at 
work in nature, are not blind or purposeless, work- 
ing without design and without control, but forces 
which are evidently in the service of an Intelligence, 
and directed by a Will, and that they are co-operat- 
ing for ends as beneficent as they are great ; and, 



Design in Nature. 53 



therefore, by necessary deduction of the reason, 
in accordance with that great fundamental axiom, 
that " every effect must have an adequate cause," 
we do certainly infer that there is behind the phe- 
nomena of the universe, "eternal power and 
divinity." 

This, you perceive, is no more or less than the 
argument from design, — technically, the teleologi- 
cal argument. It is as old as Socrates — yes, as 
old as the reasoning of the human mind upon this 
subject. It is indeed an argument which it is 
quite the fashion to belittle in our day. But it 
is none the less unanswerable. The reasoning of 
the great Athenian sage against Aristodemus, 
whom Plato describes as "a little man well known 
in Athens as one who laughed and jeered" at 
those who practised the duties of religion, is valid 
to-day, nor has it lost an iota of its force against 
atheism, whether it be that of the materialist or 
the pantheist. The organization of the human 
body, the uses of the eye, the ear, the mouth, the 
tongue, the nose, furnished Socrates with instances 
of adaptation of means to ends on which he con- 
structed his arguments. Has this branch of the 
argument from design lost any of its force ? In 
the light of physiology and comparative anatomy, 
we confidently affirm that it is vastly stronger in 
our day than in the time of Socrates. The same 



54 Design in Nature, 



is true of that part of the great Athenian's argu- 
ment which more directly bears upon the subject 
before us. "Then," continued Socrates, "con- 
sider yourself : do you believe that there is some- 
thing in you which we call intelligence? And if 
in you, whence came it ? Is there no intelligence 
in the world outside of you ? ... Is your mind 
the only part of you which is underived from any 
source ? And is it possible, or any way conceiv- 
able, that all this gigantic and beautifully ordered 
frame of things which we call the world, should 
have jumped into its present consistency from 
mere random forces, without calculation ? " Again 
I demand, Is this argument less weighty in the 
nineteenth century after Christ, than in the fifth 
century before Christ ? Is there less evidence 
of design and of order in " the gigantic frame of 
things which we call the world," since Newton 
and Kepler, and a host of other astronomers, have 
uncovered the starry realms to our astonished 
eyes, and expounded to mankind the architecture 
of the heavens ? 

Is there less evidence of design in the earth 
itself, since Hugh Miller has interpreted "The 
Testimony of the Rocks;" since Lyell and other 
no less distinguished investigators have pushed 
forward the marvellous inductions of geology, till 
the rock-ribbed Earth has been forced to tell the 



Design in Nature. 55 

secrets of her growth ; and men have traced back 
through untold ages the strange and varied pro- 
cesses by which this planet was prepared to become 
the dwelling-place of man ? Can we study the 
intricate processes of the great laboratory of nature 
through the seven geological ages without being 
filled with an awe of the presence of the Infinite 
Intelligence and the Eternal Power which has 
ordered and arranged all this, and so directed 
these gigantic forces in their mutual play that 
there has come at last out of all a kosmos, and not 
a chaos ? Can we go into the laboratory of the 
chemist, or look through the botanist's microscope, 
and discover how the most perfect mathematical 
proportion runs through both the mineral and the 
vegetable kingdoms, without similar reflections — 
without perceiving in every formula of chemical 
combination, in every proportion of vegetable tis- 
sue, the operation of intelligence working to an 
end ? 

Why, so far from the argument from design, on 
behalf of St. Paul's proposition in our text, having 
lost its force or gone out of date, it has been vastly 
strengthened — yea, it has gathered a cumulative 
force in the lapse of ages, until, in the light of 
modern science, it ought to be, to every well- 
ordered and well-balanced mind, absolutely over- 
whelming. For no age of the world ought those 



56 Design in Nature, 



words of the poet Spenser to have a deeper mean- 
ing than for ours : — 

" What time this world's great workmaister did cast 
To make all things such as we now behold, 
It seems that He before His eyes had plast 
A goodly patterne, to whose perfect mould 
He fashioned them as comely as He could, 
That now so fair and seemly they appear ; 
As naught may be amended anywhere." 

Vain, then, is it to quote Comte and Darwin as 
authority for rejecting the argument from design. 
In vain will even the greater names of Bacon and 
Goethe be, by a misunderstanding of their real 
sentiments, alleged against the legitimate use of 
the teleological argument. In vain will review- 
writers " make little account of marks of Intelli- 
gence," and rank all evidences of design "as happy 
coincidences. " 

Such purblind babblings may find a fitting re- 
buke from the lips of Marcus Aurelius, the em- 
peror-philosopher, who said, " If the gods do not 
exist, or if they have no concern about human 
affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe de- 
void of gods, or devoid of Providence ? But in 
truth, they do exist, and have a care for human 
things." And again: "The universe is either a 
confusion, and a mutual involution of things, and 



Design in Nature. 57 

a dispersion ; or it is unity and order and provi- 
dence.'' But let us summon a modern witness, 
himself a scientist and a writer of note on scien- 
tific subjects, and let him rebuke this mole-eyed 
philosophy which can see no design in the phe- 
nomena of nature. "This universe," says Pro- 
fessor Stirling in his work on protoplasm, "is not 
an accidental cavity in which an accidental dust 
has been accidentally swept into heaps for the ac- 
cidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of or- 
ganic and inorganic life. That majestic spectacle 
is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of reason as 
any diagram of the mathematician. That majes- 
tic spectacle could have been constructed, was con- 
structed, only in reason, for reason, and by reason ; 
and therefore, everywhere, from the smallest par- 
ticle to the largest system, moulded and modelled 
and inhabited by Design." 

Let it be distinctly understood, moreover, that 
the man who accepts the doctrine of St. Paul in 
our text, and for proof rests upon the evidences of 
design in nature, is not necessarily at war with 
modern science. He may be an evolutionist ; that 
is, he may stand with the moderate wing of that 
school, as many able and devout theologians do 
to-day, and yet hold with consistency the positions 
advocated in this discourse. Hear Professor Stan- 
ley Jevons upon this point : " I cannot for a mo- 



58 Design in Nature. 

ment admit that the theory of evolution will alter 
our theological ideas. ... I do not, any less than 
Paley, believe that the eye of man manifests 
design. I believe that the eye was gradually de- 
veloped, but the ultimate result must have been 
contained in the aggregate of causes ; and these, 
so far as we can see, were subject to the arbitrary 
choice of the Creator." Or, take the words of the 
late Charles Kingsley : " What harm can come to 
religion, even if it be demonstrated, not only that 
God is so wise that He can make all things, but 
that He is so much wiser than even that, that He 
can make all things make themselves ? " In short, 
the truth of the dictum of St. Paul here does not 
depend on the mode in which we may conceive the 
Creator to have acted, but on the deeper question 
whether we believe in a living and true God, Maker 
of heaven and earth. Is it your conception that all 
things are under the dominion of grand and univer- 
sal laws ? Then I challenge your acceptance of 
the statement of my text that Eternal Power and 
Divinity are manifested by the physical universe ; 
because those laws imply a lawgiver, and they are 
so ordered in their self-executing capacity that 
they speak eloquently of the eternal power that 
framed them. In this spirit Tennyson sings, — 

" God is law, say the wise ; O Soul, and, let us rejoice, 
For if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet His voice. 



Design in Nature. 59 

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit vqXh. Spirit 

may meet — 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and 

feet" 

On the other hand, do you accept evolution as 
the mode of the genesis of the world ? Still, I 
challenge your acceptance of the apostle's prop- 
osition, because, as Kingsley says, "If there has 
been an evolution, there must have been an 
evolver ; " and in the long process of evolution, 
moving ever along an ascending path toward a 
fixed goal or ideal form, there is surely a stupen- 
dous exhibition of "the Eternal Power and Divin- 
ity " of the great God who hath created all things. 

Are we, then, it may be asked, able to under- 
stand the design of every thing in the entire circle 
of physical phenomena ? By no means. On the 
contrary, we are only beginning to spell out the 
mystic legend. The universe is a vast and com- 
plicated system; and oftentimes it seems to the 
investigator so complicated, that the brain grows 
dizzy in the effort to discover its harmony. And 
hence we hear some in our day crying that the 
world is "a pure chaos of phenomena and forms." 
While others, baffled by the problems which con- 
front them, confounded by the terrible evils, the 
pain, the misery, the destructive forces of nature, 
abandon all faith in God, and cry out that "the 



6o Design in Nature, 



tragic is the law of the world ; " that, instead of 
benevolence, they discover a dark Machiavelian- 
ism in nature ; in short, if there is any divinity 
there, it is a malevolent one ! 

These utterances of despair are not altogether 
surprising. They point to the failure of mere 
reason to interpret the world and life. They indi- 
cate also the weakness of natural religion, which 
cannot satisfy man's moral and spiritual needs. 
The God of nature is, as St. Paul here puts it, 
" eternal power and divinity ; " — but poor humanity 
needs something more than this : it is oppressed 
by care and sorrow ; it is weary with the sweat and 
toil of life's journey; above all, it is burdened by 
sin ; and it can find no answer in the phenomena 
of nature to its cry for relief. But there is a voice 
which answers. Sweetly it breaks upon the ears 
of a weary world, " Come unto Me, all ye that tra- 
vail, and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you." 
Ah ! whose voice is that ? This same Paul an- 
swers, It is the voice of One who is the image of 
the Invisible God, in whom dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily. Is God manifest in the 
human soul ? But He is more gloriously manifest 
in His Son, who was made flesh, and dwelt among 
us. Are His invisible attributes — His eternal 
power and divinity — clearly seen in the material 
universe ? In Jesus Christ, who is the express 



Design in Nature. 61 

image of His person, there is manifest milch more 
than this, — not only eternal power, but infinite 
love, divine pity and compassion — yea, the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily. In Him we have the an- 
swer and the antidote to the philosophy of despair. 
For His name is Jesus, — Saviour, — and His mis- 
sion is to redeem and save a ruined world, to comfort 
and pardon sinning men, and at last to regenerate 
the world, which now presents so mixed a spectacle 
of evil and good. We, then, as disciples of this 
God-sent Saviour, are not amazed or confounded 
by the miseries and woes of humanity, or by the 
dark features of the economy of nature ; for we 
know that the earth and its inhabitants are in a 
state of ruin, and that the Day of Redemption is 
drawing nigh, when the creation itself " shall be 
delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the 
liberty of the glory of the children of God." 

Meanwhile we discover in the things that are 
created an ever-increasing manifestation of eternal 
power and divinity, while, as the "heirs of God 
and joint heirs with Christ, ,, we realize a certain 
"proprietorship" in the magnificent domain of 
Nature, since we 

" Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye 
And smiling say, My Father made them all." 



V. 
THE SILENCE OF GOD. 

" Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence? — Psalms 1. 3. 

THIS psalm is also a prophecy, — a prophecy of 
the day of judgment. It pictures the advent 
of the Judge of all the earth. He summons man- 
kind to His footstool : " The mighty God, even the 
Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the 
rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." 
To enhance the solemnity of the summons, the 
Psalmist gives the. three Hebrew names of the 
Deity, — El, Elohim, Jehovah ; the name of power, 
the name of manifold manifestation, the covenant 
name ; " God in His might, God in the manifold 
attributes and manifestations of His being," God 
in His revealed covenant relations to His people. 
This is the God who now summons the world to 
judgment from the rising of the sun unto the going 
down thereof. Yes, although now men see no sign, 
hear no warning of His approach ; although they 
even scoff and mock at the prophecy of His coming, 
— "our God shall come, and shall not keep silence : 

a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very 
62 



The Silence of God. 63 

tempestuous round about Him. He shall call to 
the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He 
may judge His people. Gather My saints together 
unto Me; those that have made a covenant with 
Me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare 
His righteousness : for God is judge Himself/' 

Now it is not my purpose to discuss the last 
judgment, when God's voice shall be heard in such 
terrible majesty, but rather to consider the mar- 
vellous, and, as some may think, mysterious, silence 
of God during the present economy, anterior to 
the judgment of the great day. 

I call your attention to the language of the 
Psalmist here. " Our God shall come, and shall 
not keep silence," — shall no longer keep silence 
as He now does. We are confronted by the fact 
that God does not now reveal Himself to the eye 
or to the ear of sense. We have the record of 
such revelations in the past ; we have the prophecy 
of at least one such in the future ; but none of us 
has ever heard His voice, or seen His shape. Even 
the revelations of the olden time were exceptional 
and to a few chosen ones, not to the multitude ; and 
hence it stands as the rule of the divine dealings, 
that God keeps silence. 

Rise in the morning, and go forth to look upon 
the world as the light reveals it to the eye. You 
see the sun mounting to his throne of glory, dis- 



64 The Silence of God. 

pensing, as he goes, life and warmth and beauty- 
over all the habitable globe. All nature awakes 
at his approach ; field and forest are resonant with 
the music of singing birds ; every shrub and bush 
and tree is pulsating with life ; every leaf is astir ; 
every blade of grass, every stalk of grain, moves in 
the morning breeze; overhead the clouds are float- 
ing in the blue ether, like ships sailing to their 
haven over the sea. But though there is a very 
orchestra of subtile sounds, — the song of birds, 
the hum of insect life, the sough of the swaying 
pines, the rustle of the dewy leaves, — yet no- 
where in field or forest, on the green earth or in 
the deep blue sky, do you hear the voice of the 
Deity. God keeps silence ! 

Go climb some lofty mountain, until you have 
the clouds beneath your feet, and the world spread 
out in grand panorama before you, river and plain, 
hill and valley, city and hamlet. You look out 
through a translucent atmosphere upon almost 
illimitable space, and you see grouped before you, 
at a single glance, the varying conditions of 
human life, — sunshine and peace in one valley, 
storm and darkness in another, a gentle shower, 
spanned by the rainbow of hope, in a third. You 
seem to breathe the pure air of heaven, and to 
stand under its cloudless dome. But neither in 
that blue arch above you, nor among those vast 



The Silence of God. 65 

ranges of billowy mountains which encompass you, 
nor from those yet loftier snow-clad peaks which 
tower up to heaven, arrayed in their white robes 
forever as the high-priests of nature, do you hear 
any whisper or echo of the voice of the invisible 
God. The cataract thunders in the gorge, the 
mountain-brook babbles in the valley, the sad sea- 
waves chant their dirge along the shore, the hoarse 
thunder reverberates from peak to peak, but God 
keeps silence ! 

Or, again, join the astronomer in his lofty watch- 
tower, and gaze long and earnestly into the 
spangled canopy above you ; then on the swift 
wings of the telescope take your flight into the 
vast reaches of illimitable space ; speed your way 
from star to star, from system to system, until you 
realize what a tiny waif upon the boundless ocean 
of being is this little world of ours. Listen while 
the man of science tells you of a sun in the con- 
stellation Lyra, in comparison to which the great 
sun of our system " pales its ineffectual fires,'' 
and then ask him if ever in all his journeys 
through boundless space he has heard the voice of 
God ; if ever from those infinite depths there has 
been wafted to him any articulate sound from the 
lips of the great Creator. He will tell you nay. 
"In solemn silence " those shining orbs move 
through the fields of space : no voice nor sound 



66 The Silence of God. 

is heard among them. Meteors flash across the 
sky in momentary brilliance ; comets spread their 
shining veils over the face of night ; new stars 
shine out in the heavens ; new nebulae are from 
time to time uncovered to* view, — but no voice 
breaks the stillness which reigns among the multi- 
tudinous worlds on high. God keeps silence ! 

This may seem strange, but there are circum- 
stances under which the silence of God is stranger 
yet. Picture some of the scenes of shameful rev- 
elry nightly enacted in such a city as this, when 
the license and the impiety, if not the splendor, of 
Belshazzar's feast are reproduced ; when lips that 
were taught in infancy to lisp the name of God in 
prayer are made the instruments of ribaldry and 
blasphemy ; when the lessons of piety and purity 
learned at a mother's knee are ruthlessly trampled 
under foot ; when the brow that was signed with 
the sign of the cross forgets to blush when the 
Crucified is put to an open shame by those for 
whom He died. Yet no handwriting on the wall 
rebukes the shameless revellers. No " Mene, 
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, ,, startles and terrifies the 
guilty company. God keeps silence ! 

Or, think of the deeds of wickedness daily 
wrought among men, — " man's inhumanity to 
man," the heartless cruelty with which the strong 
prey upon the weak, " the oppressor's wrongs, the 



The Silence of God. 6j 



proud man's contumely," deceit and falsehood, 
trickery and hypocrisy, wrong and robbery. How 
many are there who answer to the portraiture 
which the Psalmist gives of the cunning plotters 
of his day? — "He lieth in wait secretly as a lion 
in his den : he lieth in wait to catch the poor 
when he draweth him into his net." Yet the 
thunderbolts of the Divine wrath do not smite 
them, nor does the earth open to swallow them up, 
nor does a voice from heaven rebuke their wicked- 
ness. God keeps silence ! 

_ Now the question arises, and presses for solu- 
tion, Why does God keep silence? Why does 
He not speak so plainly in the ears of men, that 
none could fail to hear, that not even the fool 
could say in his heart, " There is no God " ? Why 
does He not emblazon His name across the heavens, 
so that every child of man should see it ? Why 
does not His voice so fill the world that men 
should hear it every day, and recognize it as the 
voice of God ? 

Several reasons may be given. In the first 
place, "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him 
must worship Him in spirit." A spiritual being 
cannot be apprehended by the senses. The eye 
of flesh, the ear of flesh, cannot perceive the invis- 
ible God. It is the soul which perceives Him, 
which hears Him, which apprehends Him. It is 



68 The Silence of God. 

but a vague and dim conception of God that can 
be obtained by any external manifestation. The 
thunderings and lightnings and voices of Sinai 
impressed the rude multitude of Israel with the 
awfulness of the Divine Majesty; but it was so 
far from teaching them to truly apprehend Him 
as the invisible Jehovah, that they speedily fell to 
worshipping the golden calf. Now, though there 
is no audible voice of God, none that appeals to 
the ear of sense, the universe is full of harmonies 
that appeal to the soul, and sing of His wisdom 
and His power, His goodness and His grace. " The 
heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
ment sheweth His handywork." Yet even so, it 
may be said, these voices are inarticulate : we must 
say of them as the Psalmist says in the same com- 
position, " There is neither speech nor language. ,, 
Their declaration is not so distinct, their demon- 
stration of the attributes of God is not so clear, as 
to preclude the possibility of doubt. No ; because 
faith in God must remain a moral act ; it must be 
the result of moral considerations, not of the for- 
mulas of logic. The stream cannot rise above its 
source ; and belief in God, which should be the 
result of a logical demonstration, would remain an 
act of the logical faculties, and would have no 
moral value. Moreover, if the being and attri- 
butes of God were so plainly exhibited in the vis- 



The Silence of God. 69 

ible universe as to preclude the possibility of a 
doubt, a necessary element of man's probation 
would be wanting. 

This introduces another reason for the silence 
of God ; viz., the probationary character of human 
life. Now/ probation means that man is on trial to 
see what is in his heart, whether he will choose the 
right or the wrong, the good or the evil ; and free- 
dom of choice is an essential element of this pro- 
bation. But if God's presence and power and 
retributive justice were forced upon the attention 
of men, so that they could not escape the conscious- 
ness of it ; if God's voice were ever sounding in their 
ears in warning; and if punishment followed swiftly 
upon transgression (as is sometimes the case when 
natural law is violated), — men in that case would 
act as truly under compulsion as if bound hand 
and foot, and driven by the whip of the taskmaster. 
There might be obedience to the divine law ; but 
it would be enforced obedience, and hence its 
moral value would be gone. In that case, life 
would cease to be a school of character : its disci- 
plinary and educational function would disappear. 
It would become a galley for slaves, a prison-house 
for convicts, or, at best, a machine-shop for drudges. 
Virtue would wither and die under the blighting 
influence of compulsion, as a flower exposed to a 
killing frost. Men would learn to avoid vice as 



yo The Silence ofG od. 

children learn to avoid putting their hands into 
the fire, because punishment would follow imme- 
diately upon the act ; but there would be no more 
moral value attaching to the one act of avoidance 
than to the other. Such an economy of govern- 
ment might produce the semblance of virtue and 
godliness, never the reality. The flowers in that 
garden would be artificial, made of paper or of 
china, not the sweet and fragrant flowers which 
God and man now behold blossoming in this des- 
ert of sin upon the stem of tempted humanity. 
Freedom alone, my brethren, forms the true basis 
of character. In childhood, indeed, there must 
be restraint, swift discipline, espionage ; but these 
bands must little by little be loosed, and freedom 
gradually and increasingly granted as the mind 
unfolds and the character develops. 

God forbid that I should encourage the fashion- 
able American custom of permitting children to 
rule their parents, and to grow up without learning 
obedience and reverence ; but, all the more I pro- 
test against the system of protracting the period 
of tutelage beyond its proper limit : youth must 
learn self-mastery, but they can never learn this 
without freedom. Constant espionage in the school 
and the college begets distrust and suspicion, and 
all manner of deceit and hypocrisy. The hand of 
authority must not always be kept in view, nor 



The Silence of God. 71 

must the voice of control be ever in their ears, if 
they are to learn true manliness and self-command. 
Let it be your aim to make your boy repel evil 
because it is evil, and not because he fears your 
frown or your rod. That is the discipline for the 
young child, not the self-respecting youth. 

Now, it is precisely on this principle that we 
are to explain the silence of God, of which I have 
spoken. God seeks worshippers who will do right 
because it is right, and not because they fear the 
retribution which follows. Hence He, as it were, 
hides the rod : He does not execute sentence 
against an evil work speedily. " God is a right- 
eous judge, strong and patient," — patient because 
He is strong, strong because He is patient. If 
His voice of power and majesty were ever rever- 
berating through the world in tones which would 
compel the attention of men, if His arm were 
daily made bare for vengeance in the sight of all 
mankind, who does not see what would be the 
result ? The piety which would grow up under 
such an economy would be like the repentance 
and humility of the king of Egypt, which lasted 
only so long as the thunder of the Divine dis- 
pleasure was heard in the land. 

If you ask, then, O my brother ! why God does 
not speak more plainly, why He does not compel 
our belief in His being and power and providence 



J2 The Silence of God, 

by voices that could not but be heard, why He 
does not make His judgments so manifest that 
all men would be constrained to recognize the 
bond between sin and His displeasure as indissol- 
uble ? — I answer, it is because He wants your 
love, not your dread ; because He wants you to 
serve Him freely, and not by constraint ; because 
He wants to win your heart, not to compel your 
outward conformity to His will. 

It is a bride that Christ seeks, not a captive ; 
and a bride who will give herself to Him freely, 
not by any manner of constraint. Hence He 
woos the hearts of men gently, by soft persuasion, 
by still small voices, rather than by the earthquake, 
and the storm, and the fire. Yes : for though to 
the sensuous and selfish man, imbruted by sin and 
unhallowed passion, God seems to keep unbroken 
silence, and though the ear of sense cannot hear 
His voice anywhere, yet to the man whose spirit 
aspires to the true and the noble and the good, 
His voice is heard everywhere. "Day unto day 
uttereth speech ; night unto night sheweth knowl- 
edge. ,, "Their sound is gone out into all lands, 
and their words to the end of the world.'' "The 
sun by day, and the moon and the stars by night V 
sing of His power, His wisdom, and His goodness. 
To such a man, the universe is a whispering- 
gallery of God. The Psalmist heard the heavens 



The Silence of God. 71 

declare His glory, and the firmament His handi- 
work : he heard the divine voice everywhere : — 
" The voice of the Lord is upon the waters : . . . 
"The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; . . . 
" The voice of the Lord cleaveth the flames of fire. 
" The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness. 
"The voice of the Lord strippeth the forests 
bare: and in His temple [this visible world] every 
thing saith glory.'' * 

Psalmist and prophet heard His voice in all the 
powers of physical nature : — 

"The voice of Thy thunder was in the whirl- 
wind. " 

" When He uttereth His voice, there is a tumult 
of waters in the heavens. " 

" He thundereth with the voice of His excel- 
lency. God thundereth marvellously with His 
voice. ,, 

But, O my brothers ! God has spoken from time 
to time, in the history of the world, by a voice 
more clear and more articulate than the voice of 
nature. He has broken His general rule of si- 
lence, — as at Sinai ; as to Isaiah in vision ; as to 
Daniel and other prophets. And as "by divers 
portions and in divers manners " He spake unto 
the fathers by the prophets, so hath He in these 
last days "spoken unto us by His Son." 

1 Ps. xxix. Revised version. 



74 The Silence of God. 

Hearken, I pray you, to His voice ; turn not 
away from Him that speaketh from heaven. Open 
the Gospels ; read the story of that matchless life 
of Jesus of Nazareth ; follow His footsteps from 
Galilee to Jerusalem ; sit at His feet, and listen to 
His words, and if you are a man that loves the 
true and the pure and the good, that voice of 
Jesus will have power and magnetism for you. 
It will draw you after Him. It will win you with 
a strange fascination, until at length you will con- 
fess, " Never man spake as this man." Yea, you 
will feel, by and by, that this voice of unequalled 
majesty must be the voice of God. All that is 
true and lovely and pure and elevating must be 
born of God. This man is from God. He is the 
way and the truth and the life, and He claims to 
be the Son of God. Must. not this claim be true ? 
If still any doubt linger, follow Him farther still, 
even to Pilate's judgment-seat, and to the hill of 
Calvary. Hear the voice that proceeds from that 
strange but wondrous Cross. Mark how He suf- 
fers. See the majesty and the glory of His death ; 
and, pondering all, you will be constrained to 
exclaim with the centurion, " Truly, this was the 
Son of God ! " 



VI. 

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

" Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord : His 
going forth is prepared as the morning ; and He shall come unto 
us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earthP — 
Hosea vi. 3. 

THE knowledge of God spoken of here by the 
prophet is something distinct and definite. It 
is as palpable as the morning light. It is as sen- 
sible as the rain that waters the earth. He who 
knows God in the sense here intended, is as cer- 
tain of it as he is that the sun has risen upon the 
world ; and he feels the blessedness of this knowl- 
edge as distinctly as the thirsty soil feels the 
life-giving influence of the rain which cometh down 
from heaven. Now, is such a knowledge of God as 
this possible ? Does it exist except in the visions 
of the prophet or the poet or the mystic ? Nay, 
there is a previous question, — Is any knowledge 
of God possible ? 

The agnostic answers, sometimes with a sneer, 
but quite as often with a sigh, " No, we cannot 
know God. If He exists, He is beyond our reach : 

75 



j6 The Knowledge of God. 

He is unknowable." He echoes, in a different 
sense, Job's question : " Canst thou by searching 
find out God ? " And he answers boldly, though it 
may be sadly, " No, we cannot find out God. The 
telescope does not find Him. The microscope 
does not find Him. The crucible does not find 
Him. The scalpel does not find Him." In other 
words, the agnostic confesses that he is blind and 
deaf in relation to God. He does not deny that 
there is a God : he only denies that he can be 
known. In that vast periphery of nescience 
which surrounds the domains of physical science, 
and which only grows vaster as science extends 
her conquests, God may exist, but, if so, He is to 
us unknowable. This is the mournful creed which 
underlies much, not only of the science, but of the 
poetry and the fiction, of our time, and which 
hangs a dark pall over the life of thousands in all 
classes of society. 

Now, what are we to say to all this ? I answer, 
that, in an important sense, the agnostic is right. 
What he says agrees in one aspect with what our 
Lord and His apostles have taught us. Remember 
what Jesus said to Nicodemus, " Except a man be 
born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God." The agnostic is not born again ; he has 
never known the regenerating power of the Holy 
Ghost ; therefore he cannot see the kingdom of 



The Knowledge of God. jj 

God. Remember also what St. Paul taught : " No 
man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy 
Ghost," — and again, "The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are 
foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, 
because they are spiritually discerned. ,, That is 
to say, man is by nature so far fallen, so far degen- 
erate, that, without the transforming and renewing 
power of the Holy Spirit, he cannot understand 
and appropriate the things of God — the truths of 
the spiritual world. 

Is man, then, born into this world with no capa- 
city for knowing God? Has he no spiritual eye? 
no organs whereby he is placed en rapport with 
the spiritual world ? By no means. He is not so 
depraved that no trace of his divine origin remains. 
The image of God is not totally defaced. The 
spiritual faculties are not completely destroyed. 
They are so far disabled and dwarfed that nothing 
but the regenerating energy of the Spirit of God 
can restore them to their normal state, and give 
them back their lost supremacy. But they are 
there, and in many ways they respond to the voice 
of God. In childhood the correlation of human 
nature with the spiritual world is easily established. 
No man is born an atheist or an agnostic. The 
organs of spiritual life may be only rudimentary, 
but they exist. It is because they are not exer- 



78 The Knowledge of God. 

cised, that they suffer atrophy, and by degrees 
shrink and shrivel away till they are almost oblit- 
erated. Let me here avail myself of the recent 
language of a scientific writer: " Degeneration in 
the spiritual sphere involves primarily the impair- 
ing of the faculties of salvation, and ultimately 
the loss of them. It really means that the very 
soul itself becomes piecemeal destroyed, until the 
very capacity for God and righteousness is gone. 
The soul, in its highest sense, is a vast capacity 
for God. It is like a curious chamber added on to 
being, and somehow involving being, — a chamber 
with elastic and contractile walls, which can be 
expanded, with God as its guest, inimitably, but 
which without God shrinks and shrivels until every 
vestige of the divine is gone, and God's image is 
left without God's spirit. One cannot call what is 
left a soul : it is a shrunken, useless organ, a ca- 
pacity sentenced to death by disuse, which droops 
as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers Na- 
ture like a rotted branch. Nature has her revenge 
upon neglect as well as upon extravagance. Dis- 
use, with her, is as mortal a sin as abuse. 

" There are certain burrowing animals — the 
mole, for instance — which have taken to spending 
their lives beneath the surface of the ground. 
And Nature has taken her revenge upon them in 
a thoroughly natural way : she has closed their 



The Knowledge of God. 79 

eyes. . . . There are fishes also which have had to 
pay the same terrible forfeit for having made their 
abode in dark caverns where eyes can never be re- 
quired. And in exactly the same way the spirit- 
ual eye must die and lose its power by purely 
natural law, if the soul choose to walk in darkness 
rather than in light/' x What an impressive lesson 
upon the danger of neglecting the light and the 
opportunity which God gives us of knowing Him 
and beholding His glory ! With what terrible em- 
phasis does Nature herself teach us that if we bury 
our talent in a napkin, — the faculty for knowing 
God, — it shall be taken from us ! Well says the 
prophet in our text, "Then shall we know, if we 
follow on to know the Lord." There lives not an 
unbeliever or an agnostic who would not to-day be 
rejoicing in the knowledge of God, if he had "fol- 
lowed on to know the Lord," — if he had listened 
to God's voice while he yet could hear it. Solemn 
is the exhortation of the Master, " He that hath 
ears to hear, let him hear." Yes ; for if he will 
not, the time will come when he cannot, — because 
the power of hearing will be gone. 

It is possible, then, to know God, but only by 
the renewing and enlightening grace of His Holy 
Spirit. For though man was made to know God, 
and was endowed with spiritual capacities, yet he 

1 Drummond: Natural Law in the Spiritual World, pp. no, in. 



80 The Knowledge of God. 

cannot go beyond a dim and vague apprehension 
of God : he cannot adequately and sufficiently know 
Him, without a quickening of his nature by the 
life-giving spirit. The God-consciousness in him 
will remain a rudimentary organ, an undeveloped 
capacity, until he shall be born from above. 
Moreover, this knowledge of God is not reached 
by an intellectual process : it cannot be arrived at 
only through the reason. It is faith which appre- 
hends the invisible God, yet it is also experience 
which affixes the seal to the knowledge which faith 
attains. When Naaman had been cleansed from 
his leprosy by washing seven times in Jordan, in 
obedience to the word of the prophet, he had the 
proof of experience that Elisha's God was the true 
God. " Now," said he, " I know that there is no 
God in all the earth but in Israel." 

So, also, the man whom Jesus cured of his blind- 
ness had this one and all-sufficient answer to the 
sophistries of the Jews and their accusations 
against Jesus, — " One thing I know, that whereas 
I was blind, now I see." That one ineffaceable 
fact summed up for him the evidence of the Mes- 
siahship of Jesus. Precisely in the same way the 
all-sufficient evidence of Christianity to the Chris- 
tian lies in the equally indelible fact that whereas 
he was blind, now he sees. Christ is the Saviour 
because He saves. I know He is the Saviour, be- 



The Knowledge of God. 8 1 

cause I have experienced in my own soul His 
power to save. And I am not more certain of 
this after twenty years' study of the evidences of 
Christianity, than when in my boyhood I first felt 
His saving grace in my soul. 

This knowledge of God, therefore, is not a privi- 
lege of the man of culture or the man of intellect- 
ual power, but is equally open to the unlettered, 
to the simple, and to children. It is the heart 
which is concerned here. "The pure in heart 
shall see God." 

Let not the man of science smile in lofty supe- 
riority at such claims. Let him not treat with 
contempt this knowledge of God, because it is 
unknown to him, or because it is unverifiable by 
any of his scientific methods. The mental and 
moral world is unknown to the plant : is it, there- 
fore, not real ? The grand generalizations of sci- 
ence are totally unknown and unknowable to the 
highest animal intelligences below man : are they> 
therefore, not real ? No : the scientist may say to 
the Christian, " All this is an unknown region to 
me ; I cannot enter or apprehend it." But, mark 
you, it is unscientific to say, "Because I cannot 
verify it by my methods, it must be a delusion." 

But, it may be asked, if one man can know God, 
why may not another? Why should one man 
claim a faculty not possessed by another ? We 



82 The Knowledge of God. 

might answer, " In your own sphere, O man of 
science ! all men are not equal. One has the phil- 
osophic faculty, another has not. One has the 
scientific spirit, another has not. One can move 
with ease through the mazes of the higher mathe- 
matics, another can scarcely go beyond the rule 
of three." But there is a broader and a better 
answer. There is a gulf between the natural and 
the spiritual man, wider than that between animal 
life and plant life. "To be carnally-minded is 
death." " To be spiritually-minded is life." " He 
that hath the Son of God hath life : he that hath 
not the Son hath not life." The distinction, there- 
fore, is as broad as between the living and the 
dead. The Christian — if he is a true Christian — 
has been quickened — made alive — by the Spirit 
of God. He has received "a new and distinct and 
supernatural endowment." Hence the words of 
the prophet find in him their fulfilment. The 
knowledge of God is to him like the morning 
breaking over the world after the darkness of 
night, or like the rain which descends from 
heaven in blessing upon the earth. "His going 
forth is prepared as the morning ; and He shall 
come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former 
rain unto the earth." 

Another point which it deeply concerns us to 
observe, is this : This new life of regeneration is 



The Knowledge of God. 83 

a beginning, a bud of promise, a day-dawn: it is 
not the. consummation of spiritual life, or the fruit- 
age of character, or the high noon of communion 
with God. Doubtless every regenerate man has 
come to "know God;" but it is an inchoate 
knowledge at best, — often very like the blind man's 
experience, who when his eyes were anointed with 
the clay, and he was bidden to look up, said, " I 
see men as trees walking." Saith the prophet, 
" Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the 
Lord." Saith the apostle, " I follow after, if that I 
may apprehend that for which also I am appre- 
hended of Christ Jesus. . . . This one thing I do, 
forgetting those things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before, 
I press toward the mark for the prize," — and what 
was the prize? He himself answers, "That I 
may know Him ! " The work and the duty of the 
Christian, then, is, to "follow on" to know the 
Lord, obeying the leading of the Holy Spirit, ever 
pressing on to greater fulness and clearness of 
knowledge, that he may be able to comprehend 
what is the breadth, and length and depth and 
height, and to know the love of Christ which pass- 
eth knowledge, that he may be filled with all the 
fulness of God. It is indeed true, that even at 
the loftiest point of human attainment, it must be 
confessed with Job, " God is great, and we know 



84 The Knowledge of God. 

Him not ; •■' but it is possible to make great prog- 
ress in this heavenly science. 

On the other hand lies the danger, which ever 
dogs the heels of languid pursuit of the knowledge 
of God, — I mean that we become examples in the 
spiritual world of " arrested development. " God 
meant us to rise to a higher type of being and life 
and character. We, by neglect, or indifference, or 
idleness, may suffer deterioration, may degenerate 
to a lower type, in which we shall lose altogether 
our hold upon God, and our capacity for knowing 
Him. How many professing Christians seem to 
be instances of arrested spiritual development ! 
They have no firm grasp of divine things. They 
have no joyous confidence in God. They cannot 
give a clear testimony such as that of St. Paul, 
"I know in whom I have believed." Their con- 
victions of truth are feeble. Their hope sheds no 
clear light upon their path. Altogether they are 
unstable and unsettled, the prey of doubts, or, what 
is worse, the victims of carnal security. If trouble 
overtakes them, they are driven at the mercy of 
the storm, seeming to have no anchor of the soul, 
sure and steadfast, and entering into that within 
the veil, because they can no longer say with 
afflicted Job, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." 

My brethren, of what unspeakable importance 
is it to us that our Christian life should not pre- 



The Knowledge of God. 85 

sent this mournful example of decay, of fruitless- 
ness, of death. How deeply it concerns us to 
have a faith so firmly anchored that no storm can 
shake it, lest in the needful time of trouble, in the 
dark night of adversity, in the terrible strain of 
temptation, we make shipwreck of hope ! Ah, 
we want a faith that plants itself firmly, and meets 
all calamities with the afflicted patriarch's clear 
conviction, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." 
We want a religion that rises out of the morass of 
uncertainty, and stands with the apostle on the 
rock of a clear consciousness of God ; — "I know in 
whom I have believed/' No other faith, no other 
religion, can meet the necessities of men placed in 
a world of temptation and trouble, and treading a 
path which for all alike leads down to the valley 
and shadow of death, and thence on to the great 
white throne of judgment. 

How can such a faith, such a religion, be at- 
tained ? First, by realizing to its depth our empti- 
ness and need, and then our utter inability to 
supply it. Before we can join in these great 
words of tbe patriarch and of the apostle, we must 
learn to say with Jeremiah, " I know that the way 
of man is not in himself," and with Paul, " I know 
that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good 
thing." The deep and ever repeated conviction 
of our innate weakness and sinfulness will prepare 



86 The Knowledge of God. 

the way for the entrance of the divine grace and 
strength. If we bring with us into our closets, 
when we kneel before God every day, this pro- 
found sense of our need, we shall the more fer- 
vently call upon God to fill our empty vessel out 
of the full river of His grace. But if we cling to 
the fond delusion of our self-sufficiency, we shall 
never know any thing of the all-sufficient grace 
of the living God. 

The next thing to do, in order to attain cer- 
tainty and assurance in religion, is to clear away 
certain obstacles which commonly clog up and 
check the flow of the grace of God. Of these, the 
first and most obvious is sin. " Blessed are the 
pure in heart," says Jesus, "for they shall see 
God." The impure simply cannot see Him or 
know Him. We Christians must break utterly 
and forever with sin. There must be no compro- 
mise. The guilty habit must die. The accursed 
thing must be abandoned. " He that saith, I know 
Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a 
liar. ,, So speaks the disciple whom Jesus loved : 
so must speak every teacher of Christianity who 
is true to his office. Let us remember it is an 
eternal law of God that sin blinds the spiritual eye, 
and dulls the spiritual ear, so that we cannot see 
God, or hear His voice. There is a retribution 
which antedates the Day of Judgment. It follows 



The Knowledge of God. 87 

sin like a shadow. The consequences of our evil 
deeds do not all wait till the final account is ren- 
dered. They follow here and now. 

" Our deeds still travel with us from afar, 
And what we have been makes us what we are." 

"It makes us sin with a lighter hand to run an 
account with retribution, as it were, and delay 
the reckoning-time with God. But every day is 
a reckoning-day. Every soul is a book of judg- 
ment; and Nature, as a recording angel, marks 
there every sin. If all will be judged by the great 
Judge some day, all are judged by Nature now. 
The sin of yesterday, as part of its penalty, has 
the sin of to-day. All follow us in silent retribu- 
tion on our past, and go with us to the grave." 

But there are other obstacles to a clear vision of 
God besides actual and definite sin. I mention 
two of them. Worldliness, — the excessive love of 
this present world ; the giving to something other 
than God the heart's best affections and the be- 
ing's best energies. This weaves a film over the 
spiritual eye, which, like a cataract in the natural 
organ, slowly but surely shuts up the window, and 
the soul is left in darkness. The prophet indi- 
cates, as the condition of a larger knowledge of 
God, that men should follow on to know Him ; 
that they should make this the object of aspira- 



88 The Knowledge of God. 

tion, of ambition, of endeavor. But how many of 
us Christians are "following on " after other 
things rather than this ; pursuing, oh, so eagerly, 
the objects which pleasure or ambition or gain 
hold out to us ; so absorbed in these earthly aims, 
that we have neither time nor strength nor inter- 
est for this heavenly science ! Brethren, let us 
not deceive ourselves. The knowledge of God is 
a prize which cannot be won without earnest 
effort ; and unless we are willing to seek it as the 
first thing and the best thing, we shall never attain 
it. We have but one heart ; and if we give it to 
the world, we have nothing left for God. 

To worldliness we must add neglect of prayer. 
Here we come to the source and fount of almost 
all the other evils which hinder our attainment of 
certainty and assurance in religion. Probably 
there are few of us who do not "say our prayers/' 
but how many of us pray humbly, earnestly, per- 
severingly ? How many of us approach the throne 
of grace as if we were really entering into the 
Divine Presence, — with reverence, with holy awe, 
with childlike trust ? How many of us pray with 
expectation, looking and waiting for a blessing, 
fervently pleading His gracious promises, even 
wrestling, as Jacob did, with unconquerable faith ? 

Prayer is the key which will unlock the treasures 
of divine knowledge ; but it is such prayer as con- 



The Knowledge of God. 89 

centrates the energies and the aspirations of the 
soul, — not the feeble, languid, lifeless thing which 
for many of us goes by that holy name, God for- 
bid that I should discourage any disciple of Christ 
who is battling with coldness and distraction in 
prayer, who mourns over his lack of fervor in 
supplication, and whose heart does cry out, " Lord, 
teach me how to pray." To such I would rather 
whisper encouragement, pointing them to the as- 
surance that He whom we serve is a gracious 
Master, who " will not break the bruised reed, nor 
quench the smoking flax." 

But if there is any man here who says his 
prayers in a lifeless, formal, indifferent way, with- 
out any effort to rise out of the form into the 
reality, to him I say, such prayer will never bring 
you nearer to God. The Lord is the rewarder of 
them that diligently seek Him. Go, then, and 
learn what that meaneth, " Then shall we know, if 
we follow on to know the Lord." 



VII. 

"REST FOR THE WEARY." 

" Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest?' — St. Matthew xi. 28. 

THESE familiar words bring us face to face 
with the great alternative concerning Jesus 
of Nazareth, — either He is the Christ, the Son of 
the living God, the Saviour of the world, who is 
entitled to our deepest devotion and our highest 
adoration ; or else He is, at best, a self-deluded 
enthusiast, whom we cannot even venerate as a 
wise counsellor, or follow as a safe guide. Think 
for a moment of the stupendous claim which He 
here puts forth. Who of woman born — king or 
conqueror, sage or seer, patriot or reformer — 
ever claimed power to give rest to a weary soul ? 
Liberty, they have promised, deliverance from 
oppression, social enfranchisement, intellectual 
emancipation and the like, but never "rest" 

Yet here is One who undertakes to give rest to 
every troubled heart in all the world, in all ages of 
the world, among all sorts and conditions of men ! 

Now, if it be true (as surely it is) that " only the 
90 



" Rest for the Weary" 91 

infinite pity is equal to the infinite pathos of hu- 
man life," then it follows that such a claim as this 
would be more than arrogant, — it would be pre- 
sumptuous, it would be profane, — were He that 
uttered it any less than the Eternal Messiah, the 
Divine Redeemer of the world. I am not aware 
that any unbeliever has ever made these words the 
basis of an assault on the dignity of Jesus; yet 
who does not see that if He were not the Christ 
of God, such an utterance would deserve the con- 
tempt of mankind ? But in fact, hardly any words 
of Jesus have so kindled the veneration and the 
devotion of men as these, which, if uttered by any 
other great teacher, would have excited ridicule 
by the extravagance of the claim they involve. 

Why is this ? How comes it to pass that words 
which on the lips of a Solon, a Socrates, a Plato, 
would have been condemned as intolerable self- 
assertion, to be accounted for only as the result 
of a temporary madness, on His lips are entirely 
natural, in keeping with the rest of His teaching, 
and in harmony with the impression which His 
person produces upon the mind ? How is it that 
He alone of men is able to make such a claim 
without loss of dignity — nay, that He thereby en- 
hances the majesty and the glory of His person? 
There can be but one answer. The royal purple 
becomes His shoulders, the jewelled diadem be- 



92 " Rest for the Weary . ' ' 

comes His brow, because He is a king ! He is 
able to make this transcendent offer of rest, be- 
cause He can say, " All souls are mine." He is 
able to sustain such a relation to all troubled 
hearts, in all time, as makes it possible for Him 
to give them rest, because He is "The mighty 
God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of 
Peace." 

Do you question it ? Ah ! it might have been 
easy to mock at such a claim then, when He first 
uttered it, when its truth was, as it were, to be 
tested by time. But now it comes to us illustrated 
and confirmed by nearly nineteen centuries of 
Christian history. Yes, the promise has been 
fulfilled. If He made it with regal dignity, He 
has redeemed it with a majesty which is divine. 
What a spectacle is presented to the eye ! I see 
a thorn-crowned^ sufferer, a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief, standing on the shore of 
Palestine, with out-stretched arms, and crying in 
a voice of infinite pity, " Come unto Me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." And lo ! from all quarters of this weary 
earth, the sons and daughters of sorrow, an innu- 
merable host, turn their steps to Him, as doves fly 
to their windows, and He gives them rest. As 
I look, I see a halo round His head, and a kingly 
sceptre in His pierced hand, and a diadem of 



" Rest for the Weary." 93 

beauty on His blood-stained brow; and hark! a 
voice from heaven saying, "'This is My beloved 
Son : hear Him." 

But another voice I hear, not from heaven, but 
from some doubting Thomas on earth, saying, 
" This is only a fancy picture, painted with a brush 
dipped in the colors of the imagination." Then, 
let us come to unquestioned examples of the ful- 
filment of the promise of the text. Here is an 
aged man imprisoned in one of Nero's dungeons ; 
he is alone, for all his friends have forsaken him ; 
he is in chains, and under sentence of execution ; 
but the light of an immortal hope is in his eye, 
and the impress of unutterable peace is upon his 
brow, as he takes his pen and writes, " I am now 
ready to be offered, and the time of my departure 
is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have 
finished my course, I have kept the faith : hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous- 
ness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall 
give me at that day." 

Go to that same city of Rome a century later ; 
enter the Colosseum ; see that vast circling host of 
Roman citizens, of all ranks and conditions, from 
the plebeian to the emperor himself ; hear the 
fierce cry from tens of thousands of throats, 
" Christianos ad leones" — "To the lions with the 
Christians ;" — and now mark that little band of 



94 ' ' Rest far the Weary . ' ' 

the followers of the Nazarene in the centre of the 
arena, expecting every moment the roar and the 
rush of the hungry and ferocious beasts : there 
they are, men, women, and children, soon to be 
torn limb from limb, for no other crime than for 
confessing themselves Christians. They can es- 
cape so horrible a fate by simply abjuring their 
faith ; but they will rather die than deny Him who 
has given them "rest," and whose presence fills 
them, even in that awful moment, with triumphant 
constancy. — Or take an illustration from our own 
age. There, in a foul Burmese prison, lies an 
American citizen, Adoniram Judson, the pioneer 
missionary to that part of India. For eighteen 
months he is kept a prisoner, amid indescribable 
sufferings, but his faith and his courage never fail 
him : he rests in the Lord, literally pillowing 
his head upon the promises of Christ Jesus, for 
his heroic wife has sewed up in a pillow his trans- 
lation of the Bible into Burmese, and passed it to 
him through the bars of his prison ; and having 
this, the fruit of so much consecrated toil, the 
brave and patient man seems to have rest, even in 
his dungeon. 

Time would fail to tell of Livingstone, alone in 
an African jungle, surrounded by wild beasts, 
resting in perfect peace as he thought of Christ's 
"word of honor," " Lo, I am with you alway ; " 



" Rest for the Weary." 95 

of Coleridge Patteson, meeting the fury of the 
Melanesian savage with a smile so Christ-like, 
that the arrow drops from the bent bow harm- 
less to the ground ; of Chinese Gordon, surpassing 
the fabled feats of romance and chivalry, because 
of his inflexible faith in the power and presence 
of Christ. Suffice it to remind you, that these 
and ten thousand similar instances find their only 
explanation in the fact that Jesus of Nazareth 
had fulfilled the promise of the text, " Come unto 
Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." 

Let us, then, listen to this voice of Jesus to-day, 
borne to us over land and sea, across oceans and 
centuries, with the confidence that He who offers 
us rest is well able to give it to all who come unto 
Him. 

1. Observe in the first place who are invited, — 
" Ye that labor and are heavy laden." According 
to Edersheim, He was on a journey, and, seeing 
His followers weary with travel, He used that as 
an image of the weariness of the spirit; just as 
He taught the woman of Samaria to thirst for 
the living water, through the circumstance of her 
coming to Jacob's well to draw water for her 
household. 

It would seem, then, that this invitation of Jesus 



96 " Rest for the Weary" 

Christ was of narrow application ; addressing itself 
to a certain class, and not to all ; not to the young 
and vigorous, not to the joyous crowd, or the busy 
toilers, but to the sufferers, the mourners, the chil- 
dren of sorrow and disappointment and bereave- 
ment. And hence you may be ready to think, 
that however sweet a gospel this may be for the 
sick-room, or the house of mourning, or the hospi- 
tal, or the abodes of poverty and want, it has no 
message or ministry for the firesides where peace 
and plenty smile, for the homes of health and 
wealth, for the marts of trade, the myriad busy 
scenes where men are toiling bravely and success- 
fully for the rewards of industry. 

Well, in one sense this is true. So long as you 
are in no wise weary or heavy laden, so long as 
life seems to you like a summer sea, so long as you 
are confident you can stand alone, and lean on 
your own wisdom, and trust in your own strength, 
you will care nothing for this "rest" which Jesus 
offers : you will be as if you had not been invited 
or expected to come to Him. But there are 
moments in the life of every one, even the busiest 
and the most successful, when a sense of empti- 
ness makes itself felt, and the heart grows weary, 
and cries out for a rest which the world cannot 
give. Yes, even in the halls of pleasure, and amid 
scenes of gayety and dissipation, this is true. I 



" Rest for the Weary." 97 

make bold to affirm, that there is not one of all 
the gay crowd that nightly pursues the phantom 
of happiness in the train of the world, that does 
not sometimes know what it is to " labor and be 
heavy laden. " " What ! " you reply, " these joyous 
youths and maidens, do they ask for 'rest,' and 
not rather for excitement and change ? These 
ambitious young men, do they not ask rather for 
the race, the wrestle, the battle of life ? Can we 
not see the 'joy of conflict ' in their eyes, as they 
pant for the signal to be given for the contest to 
begin ? " Yes ; this is what the world sees ; this 
is the outer aspect of their lives. But if we could 
see these same gay pleasure-seekers, or votaries 
of ambition, in their solitary hours, when the music 
has ceased, and the noise of the revel is hushed ; if 
we could read their thoughts in many a time of in- 
trospection, — we would hear again the voice of the 
disappointed royal pleasure-seeker of old, "Vanity 
of vanities ; all is vanity." For souls made with 
the capacity for immortality, made in the image 
of God, cannot, after all, slake their thirst in the 
shallow and muddy streams of earthly enjoyment : 
the infinite, the divine alone can meet their deep- 
est cravings. See how restless they are. See how 
they flit from one scene of pleasure to another, 
from one excitement to another, from one ambition 
to another, seeking satisfaction, seeking rest, but 



98 ' ' Rest for floe Weary: ' 

finding it never! I may speak to some such to- 
day. If so, let me ask you to recognize in this 
very restlessness a proof that you are made for 
immortality. Or at least let me forewarn you that 
though now you are well content with the delights 
and the pursuits of the world, the time will surely 
come when "a mighty famine " will arise in that 
land of sensual pleasure, or at best of merely tem- 
poral enjoyment, and your soul will cry out for 
hunger. When that day comes, as come it will, 
remember that you heard this day the voice of 
Jesus saying, " Come unto Me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

But I turn from those who are unconscious of 
their need, or only half conscious of it, — who, if 
they feel it at all, feel it only in rare moments, and 
then but feebly, — to those who at once recognize 
themselves as among the weary and heavy laden ; 
to the Christian who is laden with care or anxiety, 
or struggling with some unconquered evil habit ; 
to the sinner whose sin has become a burden too 
heavy to be borne, who, like the publican, stands 
" afar off," smiting on his breast, and saying, " God 
be merciful to me." And to such, I commend this 
gracious word of Jesus Christ. 

2. Take good heed, then, to this invitation, — 
"Come." Oh, the depth of the riches of God's 
free grace and redeeming love which lies in this 



" Rest for the Weary." 99 

one little word ! It mirrors, like a dewdrop, the 
whole heaven of the divine pity for us sinful men. 
It is as the tiny lens of a telescope, through 
which we scan the infinite fields of the divine 
loving-kindness, with their starry galaxies of ex- 
ceeding great and precious promises. It is as a 
narrow strait through which we look out lipon 
the boundless ocean of the Fatherhood of God in 
Christ. Now it is the voice of God calling His 
people into the place of safety, — " Come thou and 
all thy house into the ark," — type of Christ and 
His Church. Now it is the voice of the compas- 
sionate Father to His rebellious and guilty children, 
" Come now, and let us reason together, saith the 
Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow; though they be red like 
crimson, they shall be as wool." Now it is the 
voice of the messengers of grace, standing by the 
fountain of the water of life in the midst of this 
desert of sin, and crying, " Ho, every one that 
thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath 
no money ; come ye, buy, and eat ; yea, come, buy 
wine and milk without money and without price." 
Now it is the voice of the servants, inviting a 
famishing and weary world to the rich feast of 
mercy and peace spread for all in the gospel, 
"Come, for all things are now ready." Now it is 
the voice of Jesus Himself, as when He stood and 



ioo " Rest for the Weary" 

cried on the last great day of the feast in Jerusa- 
lem, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, 
and drink." Now it is the voice of the Spirit and 
the Bride, saying, " Come. . . * Let him that is 
athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take 
the water of life freely." And everywhere it ex- 
presses the tenderness and the yearning of a 
Father's heart, the sweet urgency of constraining 
love, gently pleading with the prodigal to return 
to his Father's house, and submit to his Father's 
authority. 

But this invitation does more than this. It sets 
in strong light human responsibility. It makes it 
clear as a sunbeam that man must respond to the 
voice of God if he would be saved. The prodigal 
must arise and go to his Father. All his Father's 
love and compassion will not fetch him home, if he 
sits still feeding swine in that far-off country of 
sin and unbelief. We shall be disappointed, breth- 
ren, if we expect to be carried into the kingdom 
of God as Elijah was taken up to heaven. Nor 
can we drift into the haven of rest. Ah ! the 
current of human tendency and sinful passion will 
drift us away from God, unless we seize the oars, 
and pull for our lives. 

The history of every lost soul is written in the 
solemn and pathetic words of the sorrowing Son 
of man, addressed to the unbelieving Jews, "Ye 



" Rest for the Weary" 101 

will not come unto Me, that ye might have 
life." 

3. Note, now, the character of this invitation, — 
" Come unto Me." As he said in the streets of 
Jerusalem, "If any man thirst, let him come unto 
Me, and drink;" as He said to the woman of Sa- 
maria at the well of Sychar, "Whosoever drinketh 
of the water that I shall give him, shall never 
thirst/' — so here the Lord Jesus invites the weary 
and heavy laden to come unto Him for rest. 

Blessed words of encouragement and hope to 
souls bowed down under the weight of sin ! The 
Master calls you to Himself. Fear not to go. 
Let not conscience hold you back. Every obsta- 
cle is removed. The way is open. The path is 
clear. You may have boldness to enter into the 
holiest by the blood of Jesus. No priesthood in- 
tervenes between you and your gracious Redeemer. 
No saint or angel is needed to make intercession 
for you. He invites you to come directly to Him, 
and to come just as you are, without one plea, but 
that His precious blood has been shed for you. 
There is not a word here of priestly intervention 
for the forgiveness of sins. The great High Priest 
Himself calls us to His feet, re-assuring us by the 
words, " Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no 
wise cast out." 

Observe, the Lord does not say, "Come unto 



102 " Rest for the Weary" 

the Bible/' — though the Bible is the treasure- 
house of the divine revelations, and the rule of our 
faith. Neither does He say, " Come unto the 
Church/' — though the Church is the pillar and 
ground of the truth, God's witness in the world. 
Neither does He say, "Come unto the ministers 
of Christ," — though they are His ambassadors 
to men, the messengers, watchmen, and stewards 
of the Lord. Nor does He say, " Come unto the 
sacraments," — though the sacraments are divinely 
appointed means and channels of grace to the 
faithful recipients. But He says, " Come unto 
Me," because He would teach us that nothing can 
take the place of personal communion and fellow- 
ship with Christ. The Bible, the Church, the Minis- 
try, the Sacraments, are like so many finger-posts, 
pointing the way to Christ, the Fountain of Living 
Water. They are very useful to help you to get 
to Christ, but they are not, and cannot be, substi- 
tutes for Christ. Therefore, never be satisfied 
until you have found Christ Himself ; and be sure 
you have not rightly used these ordinances of His, 
unless they lead you to Him. A living faith in a 
living Lord, a personal application to a personal 
Redeemer, — this is the heart and core of true 
religion ; and it is of unspeakable importance that 
we should maintain day by day this personal rela- 
tion, this personal communion, with our Lord. 



" Rest for the Weary." 103 

We must read the words of our text, however, 
in the light of those subsequent words of His, " I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." 
When the sinner, oppressed with the burden of 
his sins, responds to this invitation of the Master, 
" Come unto Me," he finds a Crucified Saviour ; 
and, gazing on that amazing sight, the burden of 
his guilt is lifted, and he finds rest unto his soul. 
Christ on the cross is our peace, our hope, our 
victory. Why ? Because the Cross is the supre- 
mest and the sublimest manifestation of the love 
of the Father, which while displeased with our 
sin, and suffering by our sin, yet reaches out its 
arms to reconcile and to save. John Bunyan has 
well explained this in his immortal allegory: "I 
saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up 
with the cross, his burden loosed from off his 
shoulders, and began to tumble, and so continued 
to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, 
where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was 
Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a 
merry heart, ' He hath given me rest by His sor- 
row, and life by His death/ " 

4. One word now as to the gift promised by the 
Lord to those who come to Him. It is "rest." 
Now, the nature of this rest depends upon the 
nature of the burden we bring. If we come 
weighed down with care, He gives us rest by 



104 " Rest for the Weary." 

teaching- us to "cast all our care upon Him/' and 
to believe with all our hearts that " He careth for 
us." If we come oppressed with a sense of fail- 
ure in our chosen task, disappointed in some 
cherished plan, He will teach us that humility is 
better than success, and that it may best be 
learned in the school of disappointment ; or if we 
need not this lesson, He will teach us to find our 
satisfaction in the consciousness of having sought 
His glory, and desired His approbation, above all 
other things. If we come staggering under a 
weight of affliction or bereavement, He will re- 
veal Himself to us as the God of pity and conso- 
lation, touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; 
and by and by He will teach us that "our light 
affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for 
us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory." Whatever our burden may be, we may be 
sure that if we come to Him, and take His yoke 
upon us, we shall sooner or later find rest unto our 
souls. 

But it is of the burden of sin, the grievous and 
intolerable burden of a guilty conscience, that I 
would more particularly speak. And I beg you 
to consider what the teaching of the Lord and His 
apostles is with reference to this. He offers rest 
to a soul thus laboring an<J heavy laden, — rest 
in the fullest, sweetest sense of the word ; deliver- 



" Rest for the Weary." 105 

ance, entire and complete deliverance, from that 
sore burden. Our church teaches us to pray every 
day in Lent for " perfect remission and forgive- 
ness/' This is the "rest" that Jesus Christ gives 
to the penitent soul. It is perfect and complete. 
It leaves not a spot or a stain behind. "Whiter 
than snow" is the divine verdict upon the soul 
that has turned in penitence and faith to the 
Saviour of sinners. "The blood of Jesus Christ, 
His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." He not only 
pardons, He also justifies. When He strikes the 
fetters from the guilty condemned one, He also 
wipes the stigma of his sin from his brow, and 
clothes him in the "best robe" of the Father's 
grace. 

" So vile am I, how dare I hope to stand 
In the pure glory of that heavenly land ? 



Yet on mine ears the gracious tidings fall, 

1 Repent, confess, thou shalt be loosed from all.' 

It is the voice of Jesus that I hear ; 

His are the hands stretched out to draw me near; 

And His the blood that can for all atone, 

And set me faultless there before the throne." 

5. Moreover, this "perfect remission ,; which 
the Lord Jesus offers is a free gift, — " Come unto 
Me, and I \\i\\ give you rest." The first thought 



i o6 " Rest for the Weary . • ' 



of an awakened sinner is, " What can I do to make 
amends for my transgressions ? How can I de- 
serve God's forgiveness ? What must I do to be 
saved ? " And the answer of the Redeemer is, 
"You can do nothing to atone for your sins ; you 
can do nothing to redeem or to save yourself ; ' I, 
even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions 
for mine own sake, and will not remember thy 
sins.'" The invitation is, "Come, ye ; . . . buy 
wine and milk, without money and without price ; " 
and the promise is, " Come unto me, and I wiWgive 
you rest." " Death/' eternal death, is "the wages 
of sin;" but "eternal life" is "the gift of God," 
"through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

The forgiveness of sin is, therefore, not the prize 
at the end of the Christian race, nor is it the fruit 
of our own efforts and deservings, nor is it a bless- 
ing consequent upon a holy life, but it is a free and 
gracious gift bestowed upon every penitent sinner 
the instant he casts himself upon the mercy of 
God in Christ. Instead of being the goal of the 
Christian race, it is the starting-point. Instead of 
being the fruit of holiness, it is the seed from 
which holiness is developed. This is the teaching 
of our Church ; for when children come to con- 
firmation, it being taken for granted that they have 
exercised "repentance whereby they forsake sin, 
and faith whereby they steadfastly believe the prom- 



" Rest for the Weary." 107 

ises of God," they are then presented to God by 
the bishop in his prayer as persons to whom He 
has granted " forgiveness of all their sins." And 
in such teaching, the Church faithfully reflects the 
mind of the Spirit. The publican, after that act 
of contrition and that prayer of penitence in the 
temple, "went down to his house justified." The 
prodigal, when he carpe to himself, and returned 
to his father, with a broken and a contrite heart, 
was received at once and with open arms, and the 
best robe was instantly put on him. The Magda- 
len, who knelt in tears and shame at the Master's 
feet, received on the spot her absolution from His 
lips, — "Thy sins are forgiven. . . . Thy faith 
hath saved thee; go in peace." 

Yes, the divine Master first gives us rest from 
the burden of our guilt, and then takes us into 
His school of holiness, putting His yoke upon us. 
"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke 
upon you, and learn of Me : for I am meek and 
lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is 
light." 

Friends, listen once more to the music of the 
Gospel in these blessed words of Jesus. It rings 
out — this sweet-toned bell of the divine mercy — 



108 " Rest for the Weary r 

in the night of bereavement and trouble. It 
echoes over a sin-cursed, sorrow-laden world. It 
calls us back, from all our wanderings, home to 
God. Let us obey its summons, that we may find 
rest unto our souls. I may speak to some Chris- 
tian who has never fully entered into this promised 
land of rest. So many, alas ! come within sight 
of the harbor, but never enter in. There it lies — 
that haven of rest — in full view: there are the 
spires and towers of the City of our God ; there 
is the peaceful home of the soul ; but like the 
ship lying outside the bar, waiting for the tide to 
rise, their entrance into rest is barred by some 
seemingly impassable obstacle. Dear brethren, 
do but take into your heart of hearts this invitation 
and this promise of the Lord Jesus, do but verily 
believe that He speaks true when He says, " Come 
unto Me, and I will give you rest," and surely a 
mighty tide of penitence and faith and love will 
rise in your souls, and you shall this very hour be 
carried over the bar and into the long-wished-for 
haven of rest. 



VIII. 

THE COOPERATION OF GOD AND 
MAN IN SALVATION. 

" Work out your own salvation, with fear and trembling ; for it 
is God which worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good 
pleasure" — Philippians ii. 12, 13. (Revised Version.) 

GOD'S revelation in Holy Scripture, like His 
revelation in the book of nature, is studded 
thick with apparent inconsistencies and contradic- 
tions, which upon closer and deeper investigation 
are discovered to be such only in appearance, — to 
be, in fact, truths complementary to each other, 
like the different colors in the spectrum, like the 
major and minor tones in a musical composition. 
Here, for example, is St. Paul bidding us "work 
out our own salvation," as if it was a matter de- 
pendent upon our own effort ; whereas in another 
epistle he writes, " By grace are ye saved through 
faith ; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of 
God : not of works, lest any man should boast '' 
(Eph. ii. 8, 9) ; and in yet another place he puts 

the matter yet more strongly, thus : " To him that 

109 



I io Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 

worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth 
the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteous- 
ness " (Rom. iv. 5). But this inconsistency disap- 
pears when we observe that the word ".salvation " 
is used in two different significations in Holy 
Scripture. Sometimes it has reference to deliver- 
ance from the penalty of our sins, and the holy 
displeasure of Almighty God. In that sense we 
have nothing to do with working out our salvation, 
for it is worked out for us by another, even Christ ; 
and for participation in it, faith, and faith only, is 
needed, — faith in the all-atoning efficacy of the 
sacrifice of Christ "for us men, and for our salva- 
tion." Such a faith brings to the believing soul 
pardon and peace — "justification," without any 
works or merits of our own. But this salvation 
from guilt and wrath and punishment looks to a 
larger and fuller salvation, of which it is the germ, 
and which is vitally and indissolubly connected 
with it ; and it is in the realization of this that our 
own efforts and our own works come into play, as 
one of the instrumentalities leading thereto. In 
the former sense, salvation is a thing past and fin- 
ished : " By grace have ye been saved," J says the 
apostle. We look back to the Cross where it was 
wrought for us long ago. But in the larger sense 
it is yet to be wrought out. It lies at the end of 

1 hart aeaoxrfxivoi is the perfect, not the present, tense. 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 1 1 1 

the Christian race, and is the crown and reward 
of "patient continuance in well-doing." 

Precisely in accord with this distinction, Paul 
answers the anxious question of the penitent 
Philippian jailer, by pointing him to the Cross. 
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt 
be saved;" but, writing "to the saints in Christ 
Jesus which are at Philippi," he exhorts, "Work 
out your own salvation." When the sinner finds 
himself hemmed in between the accusations of a 
guilty conscience, pursuing him like Pharaoh and 
his host, and the demands of God's righteous law, 
barring his path as the Red Sea barred the flight 
of Israel of old, then is heard the word of the 
Lord, saying, " Stand still, and see the salvation 
of God," who, by the sacrifice of His well-beloved 
Son, opens "a way through the sea, and a path 
through the mighty waters." But when the sea 
is past, and the pilgrim-life begun, then the man of 
God points to the Land of Promise, and says, "Ye 
are well able to go up and possess the land." 
Canaan was Israel's inheritance by a divine title 
and by a gracious gift, yet they must gird on every 
man his sword, and go up and fight for it — for 
every inch of it. Not otherwise must the Chris- 
tian fight for his inheritance, — the perfect salva- 
tion from sin, which is his Land of Promise. It is 
indeed God's gift to him through the merits and 



1 1 2 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 

mediation of Christ Jesus ; but none the less must 
he gird up his loins like a man, and go up to take 
possession of it. Or, to recur to the apostle's lan- 
guage in the text, he must " work out " his own 
salvation. 

I. Let us, then, first of all, emphasize the nature 
of salvation in its wider sense as a process, a de- 
velopment, a growth, and not an isolated event, 
or a momentary experience. 

We sing sometimes at confirmation when the 
candidates have made their solemn vow of obedi- 
ence, and have received the laying on of hands, 
"'Tis done, the great transaction's done." And, 
no doubt, it is a " great transaction," that act of 
deliberately choosing the service of Almighty God, 
and enlisting under the banner of the Cross ; but 
it is, after all, only the beginning of the great 
work of our salvation, the starting-point in that 
heavenly race which is thenceforward set before 
us. These Philippian Christians had been con- 
verted, baptized, confirmed, and made communi- 
cants of the Church : nay, they were so faithful, 
that the apostle thanked God upon every remem- 
brance of them, and counted them his "joy and 
crown ; " but for all that, their salvation was yet to 
be worked out. Yes; for salvation is not, as so 
many seem to think, the crossing of a line, but 
the ascent of the straight and narrow path, ever 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 113 

upward and onward, "nearer, my God, to Thee, 
nearer to Thee ! " It is the evolution of character. 
It is an ethical and spiritual growth toward an 
ideal standard. It is deliverance from the power 
as well as the penalty of sin ; and not only this, 
but the elevation and transformation of the whole 
man into a pure and noble manhood. It is, in a 
word, the forming of the Christ within us, the 
hope of glory. 

Thus we must distinguish broadly between "con- 
version'' and "salvation." The one is the first 
faint streak of morning light in the eastern hori- 
zon : the other is the full radiance of the noonday 
sun. Conversion is the first blade of wheat that 
appears above the ground : salvation is the yellow, 
ripened grain, waiting for the sickle of the reaper. 
Conversion is the first stone in the foundation of 
the temple : salvation is the finished structure, the 
holy and beautiful house, all glorious within, and 
resounding through all its arches with the praise 
of God. 

2. Let us next note the temper of mind in which 
a Christian should work out his salvation, — " with 
fear and trembling." But how does this consist 
with St. John's teaching, that "perfect love cast- 
eth out fear"? Or with St. Paul's own words 
elsewhere, "Ye have not received the spirit of 
bondage asrain to fear" ? Or with the filial confi- 



1 14 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 

dence that characterizes the New Dispensation? 
Have we, indeed, come to another Sinai, and not 
to Mount Zion ? The answer is plain. St. John 
is speaking in that place of the fear that "hath 
torments/' and St. Paul also, in the last passage 
quoted, of the same kind of fear, — the fear of the 
slave, or of the condemned offender, or of those 
who, like Israel of old, have not yet been granted 
the revelation of the gracious Fatherhood of God, 
and who, therefore, behold Him afar off, clothed in 
awful majesty, "the great and dreadful God/' 
But St. Paul in our text is speaking of a holy, rev- 
erential fear which is not at all inconsistent with 
filial trust, — such a feeling as the apostolic 
churches of Judaea and Galilee and Samaria cher- 
ished when they walked "in the fear of the Lord, 
and the comfort of the Holy Ghost " (Acts ix. 

30- 

Two things demand here our thoughtful atten- 
tion. There is reason to fear that the popular 
representations of the gospel lead men to put asun- 
der what God hath joined together, — "the fear of 
the Lord," and "the comfort of the Holy Ghost." 
We must beware of an unholy familiarity in our 
thoughts of God, and of Him who is "the bright- 
ness of His glory and the express image of His 
person." So dazzling was the holiness and the 
majesty of Christ, that when St. John beheld Him 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation . 115 

in vision, he fell at His feet as dead. And though 
we are no longer strangers and foreigners, but 
"fellow-citizens with the saints and of the house- 
hold of God;" and though we, who were once 
afar off, are " made nigh " by the blood of Jesus, 
and have access " with boldness " to the throne of 
grace, — yet the nearer we approach unto Him, the 
more perfect is the revelation of His holiness, and 
hence the deeper grows our sense of our own 
imperfection and unworthiness. Christian biogra- 
phy confirms this view, and shows, that, as men 
walk more closely with God, they ever grow in 
humility and godly fear. 

Our text, however, has more direct reference to 
the " fear and trembling " which arises from a dis- 
trust of self born of a vivid perception of the mag- 
nitude of the interests involved, the difficulties of 
the work, the dangers that surround its execu- 
tion, the might and malice of our great Adversary, 
and the weakness of our mortal nature. It is the 
church of Laodicea (whose spiritual state is all 
but hopeless) that says, " I am rich, and increased 
with goods, and have need of nothing." It is the 
holy apostle (for whom an amaranthine crown is 
waiting) who says, "This one thing I do, forget- 
ting those things which are behind, and reaching 
forth unto those things which are before, I press 
toward the mark." Nay, more than this, " I keep 



1 1 6 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation, 

under my body, and bring it into subjection : lest 
that by any means, when I have preached to others, 
I myself should be a castaway." The full assur- 
ance of faith goes hand in hand with the spirit of 
humility, of holy "fear and trembling." The feel- 
ing intended by the apostle in the text is not 
unlike that with which the captain of a great ocean- 
steamer paces the bridge on a dark and stormy 
night. However fearless he may be, and however 
skilful a navigator, when he thinks of the unseen 
dangers of the deep, and reflects upon the tremen- 
dous responsibility that rests upon him ; when he 
considers the precious cargo of human lives in- 
trusted to his care, and realizes that its safety 
depends upon his vigilance, and skill and prompt- 
ness in meeting any emergency that may arise, 
— he will enter upon his watch "with fear and 
trembling." Even so the Christian should be 
impressed every day with the greatness of his 
responsibility in steering his course over the dan- 
gerous sea of life. He should constantly remind 
himself of the preciousness of the immortal inter- 
ests committed to his care, of the danger of mak- 
ing shipwreck of such a cargo, and of the need of 
diligence and vigilance if he would reach in safety 
the haven where he would be. 

3. Pass we now to the central thought of our 
text, the statement that "it is God which worketh 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation, 117 

in you both the willing and the working." This 
implies in the first place the futility of human effort 
apart frorn the grace of God, and it suggests that 
human effort should be made in conscious depend- 
ence on that grace. The shore of life is strewn 
with moral wrecks caused by departure from this 
cardinal principle. Man without God is a branch 
cut off from the vine, a tree severed from the root, 
a flower shut up in a dark cellar. " Apart from 
Me," said Christ, "ye can do nothing." And 
Christ is " God manifest in the flesh," " God with 
us." Men have forgotten this. I speak not only 
of moralists and philosophers and theorists, but of 
Christians. Probably I speak to some disciples 
of Christ to-day, whose spiritual history is a record 
of failure, and whose spiritual development has 
been arrested, if their spiritual life has not been 
starved and stifled, by practical neglect of this 
great root principle. You have labored, but in 
your -own strength. You have set yourself to 
reach a noble ideal of life, but in dependence on 
self, on the force of your own will, on the stead- 
fastness of your own resolutions. Here is your 
story : — 

" You thought by efforts of your own, 
To take at last each jarring tone 
Out of your life, till all should meet 
In one majestic music sweet ; 



1 1 8 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation, 

And deemed that in your own heart's ground 

The root of good was to be found, 

And that by careful watering, 

And earnest tendance, we might bring * 

The bud, the blossom, and the fruit, 

To grow and flourish from that root. 



But, thanks to Heaven, it is not so : 
That root a richer soil doth know 
Than our poor hearts could e'er supply ; — 
That stream is from a source more high ; 
From God it came, to God returns, 
Not nourished from our scanty urns, 
But fed from His unfailing river, 
Which runs, and will run on forever." l 

Notice now the apostle's reasoning : " Work 
out your own salvation ; for it is God which work- 
eth in you." He encourages us to put forth all 
our strength in this great endeavor after " salva- 
tion," by the assurance that the omnipotence of 
God is engaged on our behalf in the sacred under- 
taking. But this is to reverse the reasoning men 
commonly use. One man will say, "If God is 
working in me, if He has taken my salvation in 
hand, my efforts are as unnecessary as they are 
vain." Another will say, "If I must work out 
my own salvation, then my dependence must 
plainly be, not on God, but on my own diligence 
and perseverance." The apostle challenges both 

1 Archbishop Trench. 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 1 19 

conclusions, and urges the certainty of the divine 
co-operating grace as an encouragement and a 
stimulus to human effort. "Work out your own 
salvation ; for it is God which worketh in you." 
We strive — and fail! We resolve — and break 
our resolution! We pray — and do not follow up 
our prayer with earnest endeavor ! We press to- 
ward the mark — and presently we stumble and 
fall, and our ideal seems farther away than ever, 
seems to mock us like the mirage in the desert ! 
And we are disheartened, and ready to abandon, 
as fruitless, the labor of our " salvation." " It's 
no use," we say to ourselves : " I cannot attain ; I 
cannot rise; my earthly nature drags me down; 
the demon ever triumphs over the angel in me. I 
might as well abandon the attempt." — " Hold ! " 
cries the apostle, " what is it you are about to do ? 
Give up the work of your salvation, when God is 
at hand to work in you and with you, even to the 
very desires and intents of the heart ? Sit down 
in despair, when God has risen up to your help ? 
Rather rise to your feet, and strive with uncon- 
querable energy, with inextinguishable hope, to 
reach the prize of your high calling, because be- 
hind your weak endeavor is the all-sufficient grace 
of God, because ' underneath are the Everlasting 
Arms/ " 

There is indeed a deep mystery here, a mystery 



1 20 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 

which no plummet-line of metaphysic wit or theo- 
logic skill has ever fathomed. The sovereign grace 
of God working in us, and our human freedom, 
choosing, laboring, working out our salvation — 
how are these. two thoughts to be reconciled? I 
answer, What if we cannot reconcile them ? What 
if we can do no more than recognize each as a 
truth, without seeing how they consist in harmony ? 
We can still clearly discern the two poles of the 
great Sphere of Truth, though clouds hide the 
equator from our view. We know God is sovereign 
over all — that is one pole. We know man is free 
— that is the other. How to combine these into 
one harmonious whole, we know not. Nor, for the 
practical purposes of life and conduct, is it at all 
necessary that we should know. It is a mystery 
indeed, but one which finds analogy in the most 
familiar processes of Nature. The husbandman 
drops a seed into the open furrow, and seems to 
say, " Germinate ; take root ; spring up ; bear fruit ; 
work out your own salvation/' But what could 
that little seed do, unless the earth, into whose 
bosom it is cast, and the sun that shines upon it, 
and the rain that descends from heaven, worked 
upon it and worked with it, to produce the ripened 
grain for the harvestman ? Even so, God's Church 
in whose bosom we are nurtured, and God's Son 
whose blessed light shines in His Word, and God's 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 1 2 1 

Spirit whose gentle dew falls unseen upon the soul, 
all work in us and with us to bring forth the fruit 
of good-living. 

4. But the medallion of truth has an obverse 
side, which we must by no means neglect to ex- 
amine. We have dwelt upon the divine side of 
the work of our salvation ; let us turn now to the 
human side. If it is true that human effort with- 
out God is futile, it is equally true that without 
human effort salvation is impossible. God works 
in us, but we must work with God. Consider, 
then, the import of the exhortation, " Work out 
your own salvation." It calls for diligence, earnest- 
ness, laborious effort. It recalls the dear Lord's 
own words, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate : 
for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, 
and shall not be able." " Because strait is the 
gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto 
life, and few there be that find it." "The king- 
dom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent 
take it by force." These solemn words mean 
something, — and something very different from 
the easy-going Christianity which we see around 
us on every side. They make it plain that the 
prize of our high calling is not to be won without 
diligent and persevering effort. They should con- 
vince us that the working out of our salvation — 
that is, the attainment of the Christlikeness — is 



122 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 

no mere side-show to the serious business of life, 
but is itself the chief business, the most momen- 
tous concern of every man's life, to which his ener- 
gies should be primarily and principally directed. 

You demand, perhaps, how such a principle as 
this can be carried out. Shall men abandon their 
worldly business in order to devote themselves to 
the business of their salvation ? Shall women for- 
sake their homes for the "cloistered cell," in order 
to achieve holiness? Is asceticism the just corol- 
lary to the principles laid down by Jesus Christ ? 
Not so ; for this is God's world. The family is 
from God. Society is from God. The state is 
from God. Civilization is from God. The arts 
and sciences are from God. Christ came not to 
crucify human nature, but to redeem it, to regen- 
erate it, to transform it. And we shall best work 
out our salvation by using life in all its fulness and 
in all its variety as the scaffold on which to stand 
while we build the temple of the living God in 
our lives. We will not abandon our earthly pur- 
suits, but we will follow them with a different pur- 
pose, with a different spirit. We will look upon 
all life's activities as instrumentalities for accom- 
plishing this great ulterior aim, the working out 
of our salvation. We will no longer be as brick- 
layers, caring only to finish our daily task, and to 
earn our daily wage, but we shall catch the spirit 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 123 

and the meaning of the great Architect's plan ; 
and all the while that we are laying our bricks, we 
shall have in our hearts the joy of knowing that 
we are building a house in the which it will please 
God to dwell. 

But on what principle, or by what method, shall 
we order our lives to attain such an end ? Look 
at Dore's picture of Christ entering Jerusalem. 
See the vast number of figures that he has placed 
on his canvas, — friends and foes; Jews, Greeks, 
Romans, Ethiopians. See the variety of color 
and costume and posture, as well as of age and of 
race and of religion. And then note, how, in the 
midst of all this diversity, there is unity, — ■ how all 
these manifold lines of expression converge to a 
single focus, — how all the personages on the can- 
vas are subordinated to the glorious central figure 
of the Christ, as all eyes are turned to Him in 
interest, in wonder, or in adoration. Let us 
learn here a lesson in the art of living, — to put 
Christ in the centre of our lives, and to make all 
the occupations and all the activities of life sub- 
ordinate to Him, subject to His will, — pressing 
even the drudgery of life into His service, as the 
ass on which He may be pleased to ride, and 
bidding the small things as well as the great 
things, the secular things as well as the sacred, 
business and pleasure as well as prayer and 



124 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation, 



praise, join in the cry, " Hosanna to the Son of 
David." 

Or, again, see the same thought expressed and 
the same lesson enforced in Handel's great com- 
position, The Messiah. Here, too, we have variety 
in unity, — the joyous chorale, the soft pastoral 
symphony, the sublime hallelujah chorus : but 
one all-controlling thought dominates the whole, 
— the Messiah suffering, dying, rising, reigning. 
From this all proceeds, to this all again returns. 
So should it be in every human life. Do not 
banish the sound of mirth and gladness, as if 
this would best glorify God. Do not narrow the 
range of its activity, as though that would lead 
you into the straight and narrow way. Do not 
reduce its expression to the monotone of distinc- 
tively religious ideas and religious acts, as if only 
one note in the scale of human thought and 
feeling were acceptable to God. But aim to 
bring all the notes of human experience, and all 
the voices of human aspiration, into harmony with 
the one central thought of the love of God in 
Christ Jesus ; set Him in the midst, as the Lord of 
all, and thus make your lives one unbroken Ora- 
torio of the Messiah. 

A life ordered on this principle will be as far 
removed from the severity of the stoic and the 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation. 125 

narrowness of the ascetic, as from the self-indul- 
gence of the epicurean or the earthly-mindedness 
of the worldling. It will escape equally the 
ignoble contentment which knows no aspiration 
after progress or improvement, which hears no 
" Excelsior " summoning it to heights of thought 
or of action, and the unholy restlessness which 
chafes and murmurs at the conditions in which 
divine wisdom has fixed its lot, and which in vainly 
aspiring after some great thing overlooks the dig- 
nity .and the glory of common life, and misses 
once for all its opportunity. This last is indeed 
a fatal mistake, and perhaps it is of all others the 
most common. For, in the working out of our 
salvation, we are to look for our material in the 
events, the circumstances, the opportunities, the 
trials, the duties, the temptations, of every-day 
experience. We are weaving " the mystic web " of 
life as the servants of the great Master, and all 
that His providence and His wisdom appoints is 
part of the raw material out of which the tapestry 
is to be woven. It is not for us to choose our 
work, but to do it in that state of life to which He 
has seen fit to call us. We may not complain 
that the fibre is too coarse, or that the colors are 
too dark. The selection of these is the Master's 
part, ours only to take what He pleases to give, 
and weave it as best we may. We cannot see 



126 Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation, 

how each event, each experience, is worked into 
the great whole, and contributes to the perfection 
of His design. No ; for, like the weavers, we are 
working on the wrong side ; and we must wait for 
time, or else eternity, to show us the meaning of 
each, and the relation it sustains to the end in 
view. Only when the evening comes, and the 
shadows fall, and the machinery stops, and the 
shuttles cease, and the web is taken down and 
turned, shall we see the full meaning of our work. 
But then we shall see that all the strange and 
sometimes mysterious dispensations of the divine 
providence were necessary for the completion and 
perfection of the design — the weaving into the 
texture of our human lives the divine image of 
the Christ — -" Christ in us, the hope of glory." 

"The years of man are the looms of God, 
Let down from the place of the sun, 
Wherein we all are weaving 
Till the mystic web is done ; 
Weaving blindly, but weaving surely, 
Each for himself his fate ; 
We may not see how the right side looks, 
We can only weave and wait. 
But looking above for the pattern, 
No weaver has need to fear; 
Only let him look clear into heaven — 
The perfect Pattern is there. 
If he keep the face of the Master 



Cooperation of God and Man in Salvation, 127 

Forever and always in sight, 

His toil shall be sweeter than honey, 

And his weaving will be sure to be right : 

And when his work is ended, 

And the web is turned and shown, 

He shall hear the voice of the Master ; 

It will say to him, < Well done ! ' " 



IX. 
SECRET PRAYER. 

" Thou, when thou pray est, enter into thy closet, and shtit thy door, 
and pray to thy Father." — MATTHEW vi. 6. 

TAKING occasion from the hypocrisy which 
He saw around Him, of men who prayed in 
public places, " in the synagogues and on the cor- 
ners of the streets, just that they might be seen of 
men," Jesus uttered this impressive precept upon 
a subject which nearly concerns every one of us. 
Prayer, — its meaning, its method, its spirit, its 
object, its reward, — what can more vitally affect 
our interests, our happiness, our character, our 
destiny for time and eternity ? We may under- 
stand all wisdom and all knowledge, but if we 
know not how to pray, we are miserably and pitia- 
bly ignorant. We may be rich and increased with 
goods, but as Lazarus in his rags, and with his 
sores, eating his dinner of refuse food, was better 
off than Dives wearing purple and fine linen, and 
faring sumptuously every day, so it cannot be 
doubted, that, if we live without prayer, we are 

wretchedly poor. We may be surrounded by a 
128* 



Secret Prayer . 1 29 



loving circle of friends and relatives, and hold no 
mean place in society, or in the world, but if we 
have no communion with God through prayer, we 
are desolate indeed. In that case we have no 
living source of strength for the burdens of life, 
no safe refuge from care and anxiety, no unfailing 
fountain of refreshment in the hour of weakness, 
no security against being overwhelmed by the 
losses and disasters incident to human life, no 
shield against temptation, no anchor of the soul 
in the hour of death and the day of judgment! 
For in prayer, man realizes that he is not an 
orphan on the desert of time, but a child of God, 
and an heir of His kingdom. By prayer is he 
girded as with an impenetrable armor against the 
shafts of adversity and the fiery darts of the Evil 
One. By prayer he mounts as in a chariot of fire 
to the very paradise of God, disarming the cheru- 
bim who stand at its gates with their flaming 
swords, and plucks the fruit of the Tree of Life. 
By prayer he climbs as on the ladder which Jacob 
saw, with angels as his helpers, to the Invisible 
and the Infinite. How deeply, then, does it con- 
cern us to ask with the disciples, " Lord, teach us 
to pray." 

Now, the first thing taught us in the text, is the 
importance of secrecy, or at least privacy, in 
prayer. "Thou, when thou prayest, enter into 



130 Secret Prayer, 



thy closet, and shut thy door." Why ? It would 
be preposterous to understand this precept as a 
prohibition of public prayer, of the worship of the 
great congregation, or of the social circle. It 
would be equally absurd to suppose that the Lord 
meant to teach men to make a secret of the fact 
that they prayed. On the other hand, it would be 
a very inadequate conception of the passage to 
take it as merely a caution against hypocrisy — 
against praying to be seen of men. No, the Lord's 
words go much beyond this. He would teach us 
that silence and solitude are handmaids of devo- 
tion. Prayer is a serious business, and must be 
set about with purpose and deliberation. It is the 
approach of a sinful creature to the great Creator 
and Judge of all the earth. It should, therefore, 
be clone with humility and reverence, with concen- 
tration of the faculties of mind and heart upon the 
act. For this reason, "enter into thy closet, and 
. . . shut thy door." Shut out the world and 
its business ; shut out, if possible, distracting 
thoughts and cares ; shut out interruptions of 
friends or servants or children. Let your secret 
oratory be a "closet," — a place shut in, where 
none may intrude, where you may be alone with 
your Maker; a spot like the mountain-top where 
Moses was with God forty days and forty nights ; 
like the cave where Elijah heard the still small 



Secret Prayer. 131 



voice of God's Holy Spirit ; like the wilderness 
where John the Baptist pondered and prayed till 
he was ready for his work ; like the solitary place 
to which the Lord Jesus withdrew for prayer a 
great while before day. Let the hour be conse- 
crated, set apart from common uses, sacred from 
intrusion. Let it be as an appointment to meet 
the Great King : then surely you will feel that 
you cannot allow yourself to be interrupted. 

Doubtless we may lift up our hearts in prayer 
anywhere, and at any time ; and no petition is 
more acceptable to God than that which darts like 
an arrow to heaven from the midst of our worldly 
business, or our social enjoyments, for guidance 
or for deliverance. Happy is the man who has 
learned to pray always, to cover himself at all 
times with prayer, as with a shield — to weave, as 
it were, a network of prayer over his whole life, 
so that his feet shall never escape from the re- 
straining influence of divine grace. But such 
momentary acts of devotion are not sufficient. 
A vigorous and healthy religious life can only be 
sustained by prolonged seasons of prayer and med- 
itation. The spirit of prayer may be the Chris- 
tian's "vital breath;" but the consecrated hour 
in which he withdraws from the world to commune 
with God in the secret place, — this is his daily 
bread, without which his religion will soon Ian- 



132 Secret Prayer, 



guish and die. This busy age, active, anxious, 
restless in its pursuit, whether of knowledge, or 
of gain, or of pleasure, begrudges the time given 
to the exercises of devotion in the closet. Even 
when a man has shut his door in order to be 
alone with God, it will interrupt, and tempt him 
away to what it calls the " practical duties of life." 
What with the din of the world, and the demands 
of business, and the engagements of pleasure, it is 
no easy thing to obey this precept of Jesus, and 
protect the devotional hour from intrusion. But 
depend upon it, my friends, it is essential, I will 
not say to a happy Christian life, or to a vigorous 
one, or to a peaceful one, but to any real positive 
Christianity at all. Family-worship cannot take its 
place. The public worship of the Church cannot 
take its place. What is vaguely called "church- 
work " cannot take its place. Even deeds of 
charity and benevolence cannot take its place. 

There is no substitute for secret prayer, nor is 
there any thing in the offices of religion so impor- 
tant. It is the power-wheel of every genuine 
Christian life. Nay, it is more. It is the motive- 
power itself. Look at one of those enormous 
ocean-steamers as she moves swiftly and majesti- 
cally on her way. What is it which drives that 
huge mass of iron through the water at that rapid 
rate of speed ? Of course, it is not the wind — 



Secret Prayer. 133 



though the sails may all be set, and drawing well. 
You say, perhaps, it is the screw — the propel- 
ler with its great flanges of tempered steel ; but 
the propeller is only the instrument, it has no 
power in itself ; all that comes from a hidden 
source. Deep down in the heart of the great ship, 
there is a fire which is kept constantly burning ; 
and it is that which generates the power which 
sets the ponderous machinery in motion, which 
in its turn drives the monster ship on her way. 
Such a hidden source of power is secret prayer 
in the Christian life. This it is, and not the vis- 
ible machinery of religion, which generates the 
power which drives the Church forward on her 
mission of salvation. And this it is also which, 
unseen by men, gives to each true Christian the 
spiritual power whereby he overcomes the waves 
of ungodliness and sin, and moves on to the harbor 
of God's saints. 

Now, a somewhat extended and careful observa- 
tion of the habits of professing Christian people 
has convinced me that there is a very general 
neglect of this precept of Christ. I do not mean 
that we do not say our prayers, or that we en- 
tirely neglect to retire to our chambers for secret 
prayer, but that we attach too little importance 
to the silence and solitude which our Lord recom- 
mends to us as handmaids to devotion ; that we 



134 Secret Prayer, 



do not habitually set apart a time for the morning 
and evening prayer, and insist upon keeping it 
free from interruption ; and above all, I mean that 
we do not make secret prayer the important and 
serious business which the man Christ Jesus made 
it, and which He clearly implies we also should 
make it. Too often we deserve the divine rebuke, 
— "Thou hast not called upon Me, O Jacob ; thou 
hast been weary of Me, O Israel/' 

The causes of this neglect are not far to seek. 
i. Unbelief as one of them. We do not half 
believe God's promises. Range through the Scrip- 
tures, and mark what is promised to humble, faith- 
ful, persevering prayer. Read the volume of 
Christian experience as it is written in the lives 
of multitudes of God's people, and see how those 
promises have been fulfilled. Ponder your own 
experience, and say if prayer has not often re- 
freshed and strengthened your spirit, cleared away 
the darkness, opened for you fountains in the 
desert. Oh, wonderful things have been wrought 
by prayer, even in this our day ! It has removed 
mountains of difficulty from the path of the Chris- 
tian. It has plucked up deep-rooted trees of 
habit and inclination, and cast them into the sea. 
Like the rod of Moses has it often been in the 
hand of a man of God. By it has a path been 
made through a sea of troubles and adversities, 



Secret Prayer. 135 



and a way shown to Elim where are found the 
fountains of God's refreshment, and the palm-trees 
of His grace and peace. By it hath the stony 
rock been opened, and waters of comfort given in 
the wilderness. We may say of prayer as Jeremy 
Taylor said, **It can open the windows of heaven, 
and shut the gates of hell. It can put a holy 
constraint upon God, and detain an angel till he 
leave a blessing. ,, We assent, I suppose, to all 
this. Some of us even know it to be true from 
our own experience. And yet, we lose the vivid- 
ness of our faith in the blessing of secret prayer. 
Our sense of its value grows faint. Dulness and 
lethargy steal over our perception of it, and so 
we relapse into a half-hearted assent to the power 
and the privilege of prayer ; or worse, we even for- 
get what it has been to us, and so we grow formal 
and stiff and cold in our prayers, because for the 
time we have fallen under the power of unbelief. 
What wonder, then, if we neglect this solemn pre- 
cept of the Lord, — " Enter into thy closet, and 
shut thy door, and pray to thy Father " ? 

2. Another cause of the neglect of secret prayer 
is indolence. It requires exertion to pray. It 
involves the tension of our faculties to resolutely 
shut the door of the mind against the intrusion of 
worldly thoughts, and then to turn the soul to the 
contemplation of God, and the earnest approach 



136 Secret Prayer, 



to His footstool. Prayer is really the highest ex- 
ercise of the mental and spiritual faculties. It is 
often realized only by strong effort. To consider 
one's needs, and cry to God to relieve them ; to 
discover one's sins and frailties, and cry to God to 
pardon them ; to meditate upon the divine charac- 
ter till the soul kindles into adoration and praise, 
— ah, these are exercises to which indolence is 
averse ! And, besides, to secure the hour of secret 
prayer, or the half-hour, often requires self-denial. 
It means rising earlier, and despatching the first 
duties of the morning with energy. It means 
redeeming the time, and resolutely turning aside 
from idle conversation, or from the book or the 
newspaper which we are eager to read : all this 
and more is often involved in obeying the Lord's 
command, " Enter into thy closet, and pray to thy 
Father." But against this the flesh rebels. " Nine 
out of ten human beings are naturally disposed to 
be intensely idle ; and this idleness creeps over 
the renewed nature, and lulls it into drowsiness 
and sloth. We are often too idle for the effort of 
sustained prayer. We are often too idle, steadily 
and thoughtfully to study our Bibles. We are 
often too idle to interest ourselves in bearing the 
burdens or healing the sorrows of those around 
us." l But, now, how are we to overcome this 

1 The Bishop of Rochester. 



Secret Prayer. 137 



sloth, this idleness, this unbelief ? There are sev- 
eral things which may help us here. First, there 
is the consideration of the melancholy consequence 
of the neglect of prayer. Norman McLeod has 
truly said, "As to distraction in prayer, how I 
know this, and have to struggle against it ! But 
it is not good, and dare not be allowed; but it 
must be conquered. I speak as a man who looks 
back with horror at my carelessness in secret 
prayer. Backsliding begins in the closet, and ends 
— where?' Yes, my brethren, nothing is more 
certain than the connection between backsliding 
and the neglect of prayer. They are linked 
together as cause and effect. This is why we 
are so often cold and indifferent. This is why 
we walk with such uncertain step in our Christian 
life. This is why there is so much unreality in 
our religious experience. This is the secret of so 
many inconsistencies in the conduct of professing 
Christians. There is an alarming but logical pro- 
gression observable. First lukewarmness, then 
indifference, then coldness, then open inconsist- 
ency, then deliberate transgression, and the last 
step is either apostasy or hypocrisy. The down- 
ward progress may be very slow ; but whether by 
slow stages, or by sudden downfall, the law of 
decadence is at work, and, unless checked, it will 
end in spiritual ruin. 



138 Secret Prayer, 



My brethren, I point you, as I point myself, to 
this fatal gulf ; and I pray you, as you would avoid 
being precipitated to the backslider's doom, re- 
member and obey the command of the Lord Jesus, 
" Enter into thy closet, . . . and shut thy door, 
and pray to thy Father. ,, But there is another, 
and I venture to hope a more constraining, 
argument, by which you and I may be stirred 
up to resist the unbelief and the sloth and the 
self-indulgence which rob us of our consecrated 
hours of devotion. I have conjured you by the 
awful consequences of the neglect of prayer. 
Now I beseech you by the blessing and the peace 
and the joy which flow from these periods of soli- 
tary communion with God — "Thy Father, which 
seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly/' This 
is the sure word of promise which fell from the 
lips of Jesus. Consider it well. Ah ! it comes to 
us illustrated by the testimony of an innumerable 
host of witnesses, the blessed company of the 
apostles and prophets, the noble army of martyrs, 
the Holy Church throughout the world ; and all 
with united voice bear witness that " God is the 
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." 

The secret place where they have daily sought 
communion with God has been to His people as 
the cleft of the rock in which Moses was hid while 
the Lord's presence and glory passed by. It has 



Secret Prayer. 139 



been as the pavilion which .the Lord spread over 
His servant, the king of Israel, a shelter from 
the strife of tongues and from the unbelief and the 
misunderstanding of men. It has been " as a hid- 
ing place from the wind, as a covert from the 
storm, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
land." Here have they fled for refuge, and the 
angel of the Lord has thrown around them the 
shield of the Almighty. Here have they come 
weary and heavy laden, and Jesus has given them 
rest. Here have they come in their weakness, 
ready to faint and fall, and Jesus has given them 
strength. Here have they brought their cares, 
their burdens, their sorrows, and have learned to 
cast them on Him who careth for His people, the 
Eternal God. who is their refuge, and whose ever- 
lasting arms are underneath them. 



X. 
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE. 

" If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his 
tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this mail's religion is vain." — 
St. James i. 26. 

AT the Stephens Institute, Hoboken, there is a 
testing department devoted to the business 
of testing the quality of oils and other substances ; 
and I am told it is a very lucrative business, since 
it is a matter of great importance to large num- 
bers of people to have a scientific and impartial 
test of the quality of the articles alluded to. 
There is an oil, however, which is not quoted in 
the markets, though it is of the greatest value, 
and which is not tested at any of our institutes, 
though to be sure of its quality is a thing of 
unspeakable moment. It is that oil which many 
of us — who, like the virgins in the parable, have 
gone forth to meet the Bridegroom — are supposed 
to have taken in our vessels with our lamps. But 
it is of the last importance, that we should know 
the quality of this our oil, whether it is genuine, or 

no, whether it will burn on through the night of 
140 



The Government of the Tongue. 141 

death and trial, or will prove spurious or adul- 
terated oil, so that when the cry is heard, " Behold, 
the Bridegroom cometh," and we arise and trim 
our lamps, we find that they burn low, and go out, 
and leave us in the darkness. 

Now the Bible furnishes the tests whereby we 
may ascertain its genuineness. Here is one of 
them given by St. James in our text. Sometimes 
a single chemical test is sufficient to settle the 
quality of an article : so it is here. If our oil can- 
not stand this test, it is not pure. " If any man 
among you seem [i.e., seem to himself] to be re- 
ligious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth 
his own heart, this man's religion is vain." The 
government of the tongue is the test of the gen- 
uineness of a man's religion. He who puts not a 
bridle on his tongue deceives himself, if he sup- 
poses that the oil in his vessel is pure. Let such 
a man know that " his religion is vain." On the 
other hand, if a man perfectly bridle his tongue, he 
is not only a sincere but a perfect Christian ; for 
as the apostle teaches us in another place (iii. 2), 
" If any man offend not in word, the same is a 
perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body." 
In other words, when the tongue is not bridled at 
all, there is no religion ; but when it is perfectly 
bridled, there is perfect religion. Happy the man 
who, while he cannot attain the second of these 



142 The Government of the Tongue. 

states, is yet able to escape the first. Perhaps 
none of us dare hope that he shall ever be able to 
claim that he offends not at all by word. Even 
Moses " spake unadvisedly with his lips," and 
because he thus failed to bridle his tongue was 
excluded from the promised land. But in some 
fair degree to put a bridle upon the tongue, and 
to be for the most part its ruler, not its servant, 
this is something which is possible by God's grace 
for us all. Our Lord Himself has warned us that 
we shall give account for our words as well as our 
acts in the Day of Judgment. Yes, every idle 
word shall then be subject of inquisition by the 
All-searching Judge. " For by thy words shalt 
thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be 
condemned." So also the Psalmist, "What man 
is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, 
that he may see good ? Keep thy tongue from 
evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile." And 
the wise man compares a wholesome tongue to a 
tree of life, giving this salutary precept: "Whoso 
keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his 
soul from troubles." 

But one may ask, Why should the tongue be 
bridled ? And what is there in the bridling of it, 
which carries such significance, that it is alone the 
sufficient and crucial test of the quality of a man's 
religion ? The tongue is surely a marvellous in- 



The Government of the Tongue. 143 

strument, and the power of speech something 
most noble and most admirable. It is one of 
man's chief distinctions in physiological structure 
from the brutes. Other animals have voice, but 
none but man has the power of articulate speech. 
This vehicle of great thoughts and deep emotions 
and high purposes; this, which sometimes becomes 
a chariot of fire in which the soul is rapt to the 
heavens ; this, which, itself a material thing, in a 
manner most mysterious becomes the incarnation 
of the spiritual — of ideas, of emotions, and desires ; 
this, which, though only a cadenced vibration of the 
air, possesses, at times, the power as of an angel of 
God to stir the waters of the soul to their depths, — 
why should speech be restrained ? why should the 
tongue, which is its instrument, be bridled ? 

I give three reasons. First, because the power 
of speech, which is the use of the tongue, involves 
a very grave responsibility. It may not be exer- 
cised lightly or thoughtlessly, but reverently, dis- 
creetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. 
Oh, speech is too great a thing to be trifled with, 
too powerful an agent for weal or woe to be care- 
lessly used ! It is easy to utter a word, but it is 
not in the power of man to stop its vibrations: 
they echo on round the world, it may be ; down 
through the ages, it may be ! Who shall tell the 
influence of a lightly spoken word ? 



144 The Government of the Tongue, 

The man of science tells us the vibrations of 
the air which we produce in speech are trans- 
mitted on through the centuries. So is it often- 
times with the influence of an idle, or a sinful, or 
a hasty, word : once spoken, who shall recall it ? 
or who shall put a period to its influence for evil ? 
Not one. In the Alps the traveller is sometimes 
bidden by his experienced guide to avoid speaking, 
because under certain conditions the vibrations of 
the voice may precipitate the terrible avalanche. 
The hasty or the intemperate word, or even the 
whispered slander, has often precipitated great 
crises in history, which have involved myriads in 
misery, and oftener has brought down on men, in 
their social or domestic life, an avalanche of ills 
and woes. Well says the wise man, " Death and 
life are in the power of the tongue/' 

I give you a second reason why the tongue 
should be bridled ; because the tongue both makes 
and reveals the man. If it makes the man, then 
it ought to be bridled lest it make him ill. If it 
reveals him, then the bridling of it so that it shall 
not transgress its proper limit, is a fair test of the 
quality of a man's religion. The tongue, I say, 
makes the man. Yes, for the influence of speech 
is reflex as well as direct. No word is spoken but 
leaves its impress behind it upon the lips that 
utter it, before it can exercise any influence upon 



The Government of the Tongue. 145 

the ear that hears it. When thoughts which have 
lain in the mind quiescent or unformed, or at least 
undeveloped, are brought to birth in words, they 
become living entities ; and as the child exercises 
an influence on the mother who bore it, so assur- 
edly our words exert an influence over us, a very 
real and lasting influence. And if they be false 
words, or impure words, or uncharitable words, or 
ungodly words, or unbelieving words, their influ- 
ence will be baleful. So spake He who knew what 
was in man, as none else ever knew. " Not that 
which goeth into the mouth defileth a man ; but 
that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth 
a man." Remember this ! your words defile you, 
if they be themselves unholy or unclean or untrue. 
"Thy speech bewrayeth thee," said the maid to 
Simon Peter. But it does more than that : your 
speech goes to form your character. Your con- 
versation is not only the index of what you are, 
it is also the instrument by which you become 
what you are. You will grow largely what your 
words make you, light and trifling, unstable and 
unreliable, fickle and false, peevish and irritable, 
impure and ungodly, if your talk be such. I 
say, therefore, again, the tongue makes the man. 
Then, let it be bridled, let it be controlled, let it 
be wisely regulated. 

It is also the expression of the man. It reveals 



146 The Government of the Tongue. 

him, tells what he really is. Yes, though he may 
train his tongue to deceit, misrepresentation, pre- 
varication, suppression of the truth, even down- 
right falsehood, yet in the end, and on the whole, 
the tongue will be the expression of the man. No 
man can be false always. Life is so constituted 
that it is impossible to make deceit and untruth 
the rule of speech. The mask worn in public must 
commonly be laid aside in private. And not only 
so : the habit of concealing the truth, and assuming 
a character which is unreal, will beget a habit of 
tortuous and indirect expression which by and by 
will reveal the man. However, to himself every 
man's words will reveal him ; and this is what we 
are chiefly concerned to show. The apostle offers 
a test by which we can determine the nature and 
quality of our religion. If you think yourself to 
be religious, for how many reasons soever, and 
yet find that you do not bridle your tongue, — do 
not restrain it from deception, from impurity, from 
slander, from uncharitableness, — then know cer- 
tainly that your religion is vain. " For by thy 
words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words 
shalt thou be condemned." 

I offer a third, and it is the chief reason, why 
the tongue ought to be bridled, — because of its 
wild and .ungovernable nature, and its great and 
peculiar power for mischief. It is more untamable 



The Government of the Tongue, 147 

than the lion or any beast of the forest, than the 
eagle or any bird of the air, than leviathan or any 
monster of the deep. " Every kind of beasts, and 
of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, 
is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind; but 
the tongue can no man tame ; it is an unruly evil 
full of deadly poison " (Jas. iii.). This language is 
none too strong. The twelve labors of Hercules 
were easier than the task of subduing and control- 
ling the tongue at all seasons and under all cir- 
cumstances. Curbed at one point, — profanity, for 
instance, — it will break out at another. Subdued 
to-day, it will break its fetters to-morrow. Docile 
under the influence of reason and reflection in the 
quiet of the chamber or the closet, it will suddenly 
become fierce and ungovernable under some unex- 
pected provocation, at some undeserved slight or 
rebuke. To be silent under an irritating affront, 
may be the only security from an outburst of pas- 
sion ; but how hard is it at such a time to bridle 
the tongue ! To follow the example of Jesus, who, 
when He was reviled, reviled not again, is the only 
Christian course ; but how hard to hold in by any 
leash of human resolution the tongue, which is 
like a bloodhound panting to leap upon his prey ! 
To take it patiently when we suffer for well-doing, 
to turn away wrath by a soft answer, is hard in- 
deed ; but when we are stung by the consciousness 



148 The Government of the Tongue. 

that we are in the wrong, and when our pride is 
wounded, our hopes disappointed, our interests 
compromised, our self-love mortified, then how 
true we find it, that the tongue is an unruly evil, 
full of deadly poison ! And yet it is precisely under 
such circumstances that it is of paramount impor- 
tance that the tongue should be ruled, because, if 
once it gets the bit between its teeth, it hurries 
us away into acts and words which only aggravate 
the difficulties of our situation. 

But, besides being thus ungovernable, the tongue 
possesses peculiar power for mischief. The same 
apostle compares it to a fire. Its importance he 
had illustrated by comparing it to the bit, which 
turns the horse whichever way his rider pleases ; 
and, again, to the rudder, which, though so small, 
turns about a great ship, at the pleasure of the 
helmsman. Then, to illustrate the great power of 
evil possessed by this little member, he compares 
it to a little fire which sets a great forest ablaze : 
"Behold, how great a forest a little fire kindleth. ,, ' 
A hunter in the Adirondacks drops a spark from 
his pipe, and soon that little spark has kindled the 
whole mountains into flame, and for weeks the fire 
burns on, filling the land with smoke by day, and 
lighting up all the heavens with its lurid glare by 
night, until at length it dies for want of fuel to 

1 Jas. iii. 5. See original. 



The Government of the Tongue. 149 

feed on. And the tongue, says St. James, little 
as it is, is likewise destructive. " It is a fire, a 
world of iniquity.'' Often some spark from a hasty 
or an inconsiderate tongue has set a whole neigh- 
borhood on fire, and the flame of hatred has smoul- 
dered on for a generation, till all first concerned 
in the feud have passed away. Often some spark 
from an unruly tongue has kindled in a household 
a spirit of petulancy and peevishness, which has 
scorched all the sweet, tender grass and fragrant 
flowers of domestic love and fellowship. 

It is recorded of Samson, that "he went and 
caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, 
and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the 
midst between two tails ; and when he had set the 
brands on fire, he let them go into the standing 
corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the 
shocks and also the standing corn, with the vine- 
yards and olives. ,, But one slanderous tongue in 
a community will sometimes do more damage than 
the three hundred foxes with their one hundred 
and fifty firebrands : it will burn up the fruits of 
the spirit, — love, joy, peace, good will. Well says 
the son of Sirach, " Curse the whisperer and double- 
tongued : for such have destroyed many that were 
at peace. A backbiting tongue hath disquieted 
many, and driven them from nation to nation : 
strong cities hath it pulled down, and overthrown 



150 The Government of the Tongue. 

the houses of great men. . . . The stroke of the 
whip maketh marks in the flesh : but the stroke of 
the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen 
by the edge of the sword : but not so many as have 
fallen by the tongue. Well is he that is defended 
from it, and hath not passed through the venom 
thereof ; who hath not drawn the yoke thereof, 
nor hath been bound in her bands. For the yoke 
thereof is a yoke of iron, and the bands thereof 
are bands of brass. The death thereof is an evil 
death, the grave were better than it " (Ecclus. 
xxviii. 13, 14, 17-21). 

And then, the tongue possesses this peculiarity, 
that it draws all the members and all the faculties 
after it in its transgression. As the apostle puts 
it, " So is the tongue among our members that it 
defileth the whole body." Yes, let the tongue go 
unbridled, and it will run away with all the other 
members : it will inflame the eye with passion ; it 
will hurry the feet into paths of revenge ; it will 
arm the hand with the instruments of hatred. He 
who bridleth not his tongue need not think to 
govern his temper, or to restrain his hands from 
evil, or to walk in the paths of peace. As poison 
quickly permeates the blood, as the fire sweeps 
on the wings of the wind over the prairie, so 
the tongue inflames the whole man : to use again 
the language of St. James, " It setteth on fire the 



The Government of the Tongue. 1 5 1 

course of nature," — the whole compass of man's 
being, the circumference of his corporeal powers. 
But wherefore ? Whence does it derive this fatal 
power ? The apostle reveals the reason when he 
adds, "and it is set on fife of hell." Terrible 
thought, yet one which it is well to remember in 
all its fearful significance. Spirits from the bot- 
tomless pit set the tongue on fire. All the devils 
which tempt and ruin men use it for their instru- 
ment, — the demon of hate, the demon of re- 
venge, the demon of pride, the demon of blasphemy, 
the demon of uncleanness, the demon of envy, the 
demon of slander, the demon of lying, the demon 
of discontent, the demon of impatience. All 
these and many more find in the tongue their 
ready instrument : rising from the bottomless pit, 
they set the tongue on fire, and it sets the whole 
course of nature on fire, and so the will of hell is 
worked on earth by men made in the image of 
God. Oh the pity ! oh the shame ! That this 
which the Psalmist well calls "the best member 
that we have," should thus be made the tool of 
Satan! That speech — that high prerogative of 
man, whereby he is in his bodily structure chiefly 
distinguished from the brutes — should be made 
the means of bestializing, yea, demonizing, this heir 
of immortality ! That the tongue, which was made 
to sing God's praise, and to publish His glory, and 



152 The Government of the Tongue 

to speak good of His name, should be turned into 
an instrument of profanity and blasphemy, of 
murmuring and unbelief! That the tongue, I 
say, so wondrously gifted as a means of fellow- 
ship and of the communication of knowledge ; the 
tongue, which was attuned for the accents of charity 
and benevolence, of pity and compassion, should 
become the foul instrument of disseminating lies, 
of stirring up strife, of destroying the peace of 
families, the good-fellowship of neighborhoods, the 
harmony of nations ; should become the channel 
of all that is false and impure and cruel ! Yet to 
such sad ends does sin turn the gracious purposes 
of the God of Love. 

Certainly, then, my brethren, if all this be true 
of the power of the tongue for evil, it is most 
plain why it is before all things necessary that it 
should be bridled by him who would be a servant 
of God. Let us learn to bear in mind the great 
responsibility of speech in its relations to the 
happiness of others ; let us never forget that the 
tongue both makes and reveals the man ; and let 
us reflect that it is possessed of infinite power for 
evil ; since it is a fire, a very world of iniquity, and 
is set on fire of hell. He who rightly considers 
these things will not only be scrupulous always to 
avoid falsehood and profanity and obscenity and 
malicious slanders, but he will put a bridle upon 



The Government of the Tongue. 153 

his tongue in many other ways : he will be very 
careful not to speak evil of his neighbor, even 
though true, except when duty or charity requires ; 
he will not repeat the chatterings of gossip ; he will 
be slow to speak. He will set a watch at the door 
of his lips, and will allow nothing to pass which 
cannot give the countersign of truth and purity 
and charity. He will remember the counsel of the 
son of Sirach, " Weigh thy words in a balance, 
and make a door and bar for thy mouth.'' He will 
restrain his tongue from the beginnings of impa- 
tience, petulance, and anger : he will also rein in 
his tongue whenever it offers to utter a word of 
discontent, or murmuring against his lot, or against 
the providence of God. And he will undertake 
all this in the confidence of success ; for though 
"no man can tame " his tongue, yet the grace of 
God can tame it, and that grace is freely offered 
to every one that needs it. 



XL 



CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF 
HUMANITY. 

" The Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness 
of Thy rising" — Isaiah lx. 3. 

THERE must have been among the primitive 
Christians a pious curiosity to know the inci- 
dents which marked the early years of the life of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. The story of His infancy and 
childhood would be almost as eagerly read as that 
of His manhood, and the Church would bend over 
His cradle as devoutly and reverently as she would 
bow before His cross. There must have been, too, 
at hand the materials out of which such a story 
could be written ; for the Blessed Virgin would 
treasure up, with more than wonted maternal care, 
every incident of those wondrous early years, and 
it would be strange, indeed, if she did not share 
so precious a treasure with the women of her ac- 
quaintance who were such devoted disciples of her 
Divine Son. And yet there is no " Gospel of the 
Infancy" among the sacred writings of the Chris- 
tian Church. That apocryphal Gospel which bears 
154 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 1 5 5 

the name is so manifestly spurious, and so utterly- 
puerile in style and scope and conception, that it 
is unnecessary even to refer to it. The sacred 
writers pass by with what we must call super- 
human silence, the whole period of the infancy and 
childhood. Nay more, thirty out of the three 
and thirty years of that divine-human life are 
entirely omitted by two of the four evangelists, 
and by the other two are so lightly touched that 
their silence is only brought out thereby in stronger 
relief. Thus, where the writer of fiction would 
have been most diffuse, they are almost utterly 
silent. Where a mythical story would have been 
rich and full, this gospel story is scant even to 
poverty. Where a poet or a painter would have 
given a rich and carefully elaborated picture, 
these evangelists have been withheld from giving 
more than the meagerest outline. 

The most notable exception to this rule of 
silence is found in the story of the visit of the 
Magi to the infant Christ, which derives peculiar 
interest and importance from the very circum- 
stance of its exceptional character. It is, by the 
way, no inconsiderable proof of the inner harmony 
of the Gospel narratives, that this visit of the 
Gentile sages should have been recorded by St. 
Matthew, who wrote from an avowedly Jewish 
stand-point, and whose gospel is so saturated with 



1 56 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

Jewish ideas ; while the story of the Jewish shep- 
herds, the first to whom the glad tidings of the 
Messiah's birth was communicated, is told by St. 
Luke, whose gospel was written primarily for 
Gentile readers. This might serve to remind the 
Gentile Christian, that salvation was of the Jews. 
That might keep before the mind of the Jewish 
convert the truth that the Christ was sent with a 
salvation which was meant, not for the Jew only, 
but also for the Gentile. The story indeed is 
profoundly interesting, and in many points of view 
very instructive and suggestive ; and the event 
which it records has been held by the Christian 
Church of such high import, that it has been 
commemorated along with the nativity and the 
circumcision, and the crucifixion and the resur- 
rection and the ascension. For this purpose the 
feast of the Epiphany was instituted ; and it is 
given in our church system a prominence which is 
very striking, but which is not, I fear, generally 
recognized. Not only have we the feast of the 
Epiphany, but the Epiphany season, of varying 
length, sometimes of six weeks' duration — as 
long as the Lenten season itself ; and the idea of 
the season is as strongly emphasized and as vividly 
portrayed in the several Epistles and Gospels as 
that of any other season of the Christian year. 
What is that idea ? It is, as every child in our 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 157 

Sunday schools knows, or should know, the mani- 
festation of Christ, the outshining of HJis glory 
upon men. It has been from the earliest times 
associated with a cycle of events, each of which 
presents a phase of the same idea. The baptism 
of Christ, when the Divine Sonship was mani- 
fested by the voice from heaven and the descent 
of the Holy Ghost; the miracle at Cana, when 
Jesus manifested forth His glory, and His disciples 
believed on Him ; the feeding of the five thousand, 
when again His miraculous power was manifested 
to men, — all these events have been associated 
with the Epiphany. But that which unquestion- 
ably stands in the foremost place, in association 
with this season, is the visit of the Magi, whose 
coming realized that ancient prophecy, "The 
Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the 
brightness of Thy rising. ,, Accordingly, we find 
this phase of the idea occupying the most promi- 
nent place in the service for the feast of the 
Epiphany. That is, in fact, the definition given 
by the prayer-book. " The Epiphany, or manifes- 
tation of Christ to the Gentiles," and collect, 
epistle, and gospel, develop and emphasize the 
same aspect of the subject. It is to this phase 
of the idea of the Epiphany that I shall confine 
myself this morning. 

Now the question at once arises, why give such 



1 5 8 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

prominence to this idea in the church year ? Why- 
should the Christian Church in this age of the 
world celebrate a festival in commemoration of the 
visit of those Eastern Magi to the infant Christ ? 
And if it be replied that it is not that event, but 
that which it involved, viz., the manifestation of 
Christ to the Gentiles, which we commemorate, 
then the further question arises, can Christians in 
this day celebrate Christ's Epiphany to the Gen- 
tiles with any real sense of joy ? 

I. We find a sufficient answer to these ques- 
tions in the consideration that the Epiphany ex- 
hibits Christianity in its sublimest aspect, as the 
religion of humanity. In the spectacle of those 
Eastern sages bending the knee in adoration, and 
offering gold and frankincense and myrrh to the 
infant Christ, we have a most impressive demon- 
stration of the universality of the Christian reli- 
gion. Here already by the manger, it becomes 
evident that Jesus of Nazareth is to attract the 
wise and learned as well as the simple and un- 
lettered, men of intellect and culture as well as 
shepherds and ploughmen. He is to be a Saviour 
for all sorts and conditions of men, and for all 
ranks of society, and for all classes of minds. 
Here also, or ever the Son of God is born into 
the world, is given evidence and assurance of the 
Father's gracious purpose to break down the bar- 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 159 

riers between race and race, and bring in a reli- 
gion which shall know no distinction between Jew 
and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free. 
Thirty-three years after this, the apostle Peter 
had to learn, by a vision, that God had granted 
repentance to the Gentiles also, and that the Gen- 
tiles might be made partakers of the grace of 
Christ. Yet all that had been clearly foreshad- 
owed, when, by the leading of a star, God had 
guided these Gentile magnates to the infant Sa- 
viour's feet. Scarcely in this age has the Chris- 
tian Church learned that even in a pagan darkness, 
men may feel after God, and find Him ; and yet, 
here in Bethlehem, the disciples of an alien and 
very erroneous creed, possibly that of Zoroaster, 
had been accepted in their worship and their offer- 
ings by Him who came that He might draw all 
men unto Him. It is the Epiphany of such a 
grand and sublime idea as this — a religion as 
universal as man — meant for mankind, and meet 
for mankind, sweeping away all walls of separa- 
tion between race and race, and bringing all peo- 
ples and tongues together on the same common 
ground of salvation — it is this which our Feast 
of Epiphany commemorates; and if " the morning 
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted 
for joy," when the foundations of this material 
universe were laid, surely the sons of men may 



160 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

with even greater reason celebrate the event which 
laid the foundation of such a kingdom as this. 

Let us remember that Christianity is in this 
respect profoundly original. It had no predeces- 
sor, and it has had no true successor in the pre- 
sentation of this idea. For us who have never 
known any other conception of religion except to 
reject it as false and inadequate, it is impossible 
to realize that such a notion was new and strange, 
and full of difficulty to the minds of men who had 
been educated under the narrow systems, whether 
of Judaism or of paganism. " Everywhere before 
Jesus Christ," says Guizot in his " Essence of the 
Christian Religion/' " religions were national, local, 
establishing between peoples, classes, individuals, 
enormous distances and inequalities. ... In the 
universality of the religious faith (of. the Christian 
religion) and in the independence of the religious 
society, I am constrained to recognize sublime 
novelties, — rays of light divine." 

"The plans and labors of statesmen," says 
Channing, "sink into the sports of children when 
compared with the work which Jesus announced. 
The idea of changing the moral aspect of the whole 
earth, of recovering all nations to the pure and in- 
ward worship of the one God, and to a spirit of 
divine and fraternal love, was one of which we 
meet not a trace in philosopher or legislator be- 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 161 

fore Him. The human mind had given no prom- 
ise of this extent of view. We witness a vastness 
of purpose, a grandeur of thought and feeling so 
original, so superior to the workings of all other 
minds, that nothing but our familiarity can pre- 
vent our contemplation of it with wonder and 
profound awe." 

" Look at it for a moment," says Liddon. " Here 
is, as it seems, a Galilean peasant, surrounded by 
a few followers, taken, like Himself, from the low- 
est orders of society ; yet He deliberately proposes 
to rule all human thought, to make Himself the 
centre of all human affections, to be the law-giver 
of humanity, the object of man's adoration. He 
founds a spiritual society, the thought and heart 
•and activity of which are to converge upon His 
person ; and He tells His followers that this 
society which He is forming is the real explanation 
of the highest visions of seers and prophets, that 
it will embrace all races, and extend throughout 
all time. . . . There was to be a universal religion, 
and He would found it. A universal religion was 
just as foreign an idea to heathenism as to Juda- 
ism. Heathenism held that the state was the high- 
est form of social life : religious life, like family 
life, was deemed subordinate to political interests. 
... A century and a half after the incarnation, in 
his attack upon the Church, Celsus ridicules the 



1 62 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

idea of a universal religion as a manifest folly ; 
yet Jesus Christ has staked His whole claim to 
respect and confidence upon announcing it. . . . 
' Go/ He says to His apostles, ' make disciples 
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you ; and, lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world.' He 
founds a world-wide religion, and He promises to 
be the present invigorating force of that religion 
to the end of time " * 

It was this grand and original conception, so 
new to the world then, and so hard to believe, but 
which has now penetrated Christendom so thor- 
oughly that men have forgotten that they owe it 
to Christ — this it was which was really involved 
in the first great Epiphany, when the " Gentiles 
came to His light, and kings to the brightness of 
His rising." When, therefore, it is asked, what 
personal or real interest can we, in this far Western 
land, in this late age of the world, take in the 
"manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles eighteen 
hundred years ago," I answer, the same which a 
nation of freemen takes in the celebration of the 
anniversary of the day, though centuries intervene, 
on which their liberty was achieved. Nay, by as 

1 Bampton Lectures of 1866, p. 117. 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 163 

much as we are profoundly and vitally interested 
in the knowledge that Christ is the Saviour x)f all 
men, without distinction of race or station, by so 
much are we interested in that first Epiphany of 
the story of the new-born Christ to those Gentile 
sages, by so much is the manifestation of Christ 
to the Gentiles a truth which most closely and 
dearly concerns us. 

II. But now, what of the realization of that 
grand idea of a universal religion ? Has it been 
realized ? Or has it remained a beautiful vision in 
the air, too sublime, too ethereal ever to walk the 
earth in flesh and blood ? 

The answer is twofold. Yes and no. "No," 
for the conquests of Christianity are yet incom- 
plete ; mankind is not yet as a whole brought into 
contact with this idea ; the nations of the earth 
are not yet penetrated with the knowledge of this 
gospel of humanity ; the kingdom of God is as yet 
only partially established. Some may think that 
this "no" is really so sweeping that there is no 
room for "yes." But it is not so. In a high and 
glorious sense, it may be affirmed that this idea 
has been realized. Time and history have justified 
it as a true idea. It has come down to earth. Like 
Him who is the author of it, it has been "made 
flesh, and dwelt among us." 

It has had an individual realization. Wherever, 



164 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

since the proclamation of the gospel, a human 
heart has opened to the influences of the Christ, 
and entered into sympathy with His great plan 
of a universal society, a world-wide kingdom, 
there the idea of Christianity has been incarnated 
and justified. For when all walls of sectarian nar- 
rowness, national jealousy, social prejudice, are 
thrown down, and the currents of human sympathy 
are allowed to flow in freely and without obstruc- 
tion from all quarters, just because they are hu- 
man ; when the sovereign and redeeming grace 
of the "strong Son of God" are loyally and lov- 
ingly accepted, and not only the vicious tendencies 
but the selfishness of human nature is exorcised ; 
and when the soul thus regenerated makes the 
plan and the idea of Christ its own, and opens 
itself to the influences of a world-embracing char- 
ity, — then surely the conception of a religion of 
humanity becomes an actuality, and Christ's grand 
idea is realized. But it has also been realized in 
part, at least, collectively as well as individually. 
That prophetic scene at Bethlehem, when the 
three great men from the Orient bent in lowly 
adoration before the infant Christ, has again and 
again been repeated in the ages that have since 
elapsed. " The Gentiles have come to His light, 
and kings to the brightness of His rising." That 
first Epiphany of the Messiah to the representa- 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 165 

tives of a Gentile race and an alien creed was 
only the first of a circling series of Epiphanies by 
which the nations of the earth and their kings and 
rulers have seen the light and rejoiced in the re- 
deeming grace of the Christ of God. 

Did not the Star of Bethlehem presently shine 
upon Ephesus and Alexandria and Athens and 
Rome ? Did not its light beam forth in all direc- 
tions, till it was seen in every part of the Roman 
Empire ? Did not the monarchs of that empire 
soon come on bended knee to worship at the feet 
of the Babe of Bethlehem ? Did not the religion 
of Jesus gradually supersede all other religions 
and systems of philosophy — not by the power of 
the sword, but by its own inherent, silent might — 
even, as of old, the image of Dagon fell before the 
Ark of God ? Time fails me to follow the spread- 
ing of the light of that Star of Bethlehem. Suffice 
it that we remember that the nations of Christen- 
dom to-day, which are the rulers of the world, and 
whose ideas and civilization are rapidly becoming 
universally dominant among men, are Gentile 
nations, to whom the Christ has been manifested. 

Yes, my brethren, the religion of- the Nazarene 
carpenter has demonstrated its truth and its power 
on myriads of battle-fields in every part of the 
world. The vigorous Roman, the polished Greek, 
the rude barbarians of the North, before whose 



1 66 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

fierce assault the Roman empire fell, — all have 
bowed to its sway. And in our day, in this cen- 
tury, we have seen it proving its might in new 
and untried fields, among the savages of Polynesia 
and Madagascar and Africa and North America ; 
among the strong and ancient civilizations of 
China and Japan ; among the intellectual and cul- 
tured races of India. And everywhere it shows 
itself equal to the needs of the human heart, able 
to satisfy the human reason, able to give peace to 
the human conscience. Thus, by its universal 
adaptability to the varying needs and circum- 
stances of men, without distinction of age or 
race or temperament or mental development, 
Christianity has magnificently demonstrated the 
truth and vitality of its idea, has completely vindi- 
cated its claim to be the religion of humanity. It 
has not, indeed, become the religion of the whole 
human race. But it has so far been tested among 
the diverse peoples and tribes of mankind, that it 
may safely be said, with strictest regard to scien- 
tific accuracy, that it is fit to be the religion of 
the whole human race. In this respect, it stands 
alone. No other system, religious or philosophi- 
cal, can claim to be universal in its power of adap- 
tation. Indeed, no other reformer, philosopher, or 
founder of a religion, ever put forth such a claim. 
The Jewish carpenter, alone among men, under- 



Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 167 

takes to found a world-embracing kingdom of 
human hearts — a plan and an enterprise * beside 
which the ambitious schemes of Alexander or 
Caesar or Napoleon sink into utter insignificance. 
He undertakes it — and He succeeds ! His king- 
dom spreads. Through the darkness comes the 
cry, " Watchman, what of the night ? Watchman, 
what of the night ?" And he who widely and 
wisely scans the horizon, makes answer cheerily, 
" The morning cometh." Yes, the light breaks 
on many a dark shore, and on many a habitation 
of superstition and cruelty. The Star of Bethle- 
hem rises higher. Ages are its own ; its course 
cannot be predicted by our astronomers ; but it is 
moving upward, its light is spreading far and wide, 
and the reddening sky gives promise of the com- 
ing day. The Gentiles still come to His light, and 
kings to the brightness of His rising. 

Brethren, our hearts should swell with gratitude 
to God, that we have been made partakers of the 
benefits of that Epiphany. Fitly does the epistle 
for this day utter in our ears the constraining 
appeal of St. Paul, " I beseech you, therefore, 
brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present 
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto 
God." Let our hearts respond to that appeal by a 
renewed and cheerful consecration of ourselves and 
all that we have to His service. And let us remem- 



1 68 Christianity the Religion of Humanity. 

ber that the realization of Christ's idea of a religion 
of humanity depends, humanly speaking, upon the 
Church, and upon ourselves as members of the 
same. It is ours to make Epiphany of the gospel 
throughout the world. Oh, may our hearts never 
fail to beat in sympathy with Christ in His grand 
idea of a universal religion! May we -never take 
part in the building up of those walls of separation 
by which many Christians circumscribe their inter- 
ests, their prayers, their alms ! Ah ! they do not 
circumscribe the kingdom of Christ. They only 
wall up their own hearts, and shut themselves out 
of the kingdom in a little selfish Utica of their 
own, and a chill and cheerless Christianity is 
theirs indeed ! But no ! Be it ours, my brethren, 
to throw ourselves with faith and courage and 
hope into the Redeemer's plan, gladly giving 
thought and time and prayers and means, that His 
way may be known upon earth, His saving health 
among all nations ! Amen. 



XII. 
A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 

*/ speak as to wise men ; judge ye what I say." — I CORIN- 
THIANS x. 15. 

"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." 
— Galatians vi. 2. 

IT is a striking fact that the Episcopal Church, 
which until very recently has held more studi- 
ously aloof than any other religious body from 
participation in what is called "temperance work/' 
is to-day the only church in the United States 
which has organized a " Church Temperance 
Society." 

God be praised that our venerable Church, which 
has always taught her children in her catechism to 
"keep their bodies in temperance, soberness, and 
chastity," has perceived the necessity of organ- 
izing her influence against the gigantic evil of 
intemperance ! 

Our own diocesan, Bishop Henry C. Potter, asks 
his clergy to call the attention of their parishioners 
to "the need of united effort by means of the 

Church Temperance Society and any other tried 

169 



170 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

and approved agency, to stay the ravages of the 
great and grievous moral pestilence of intemper- 
ance," and adds these solemn words : "If it were 
cholera or yellow-fever that threatened us to-day, 
the whole land would be on fire with efforts to 
arrest it; and yet this dread disease slays its mil- 
lions for hundreds that perish in other ways." 

I need not here discuss the principles of the 
Church Temperance Society. Enough if I sim- 
ply restate them : — 

1st, That the Church, as the Body of Christ, 
should deal directly with temperance reform. 

2d, That this reform should be distinctly 
Christian (not merely humanitarian or social or 
moral) in its principles, and should recognize the 
grace of God in and through our Lord Jesus Christ 
as the means supreme above all others by which 
its ends are to be sought. 

3d, That the basis on which its work should be 
conducted is "union and co-operation on equal 
terms, for the promotion of temperance, between 
those who use moderately, and those who. entirely 
abstain from, intoxicating drinks as beverages." 

If the Church is true to these principles, she will 
not stand an idle spectator on the bank while tens 
of thousands are sinking, to rise no more, beneath 
the dark tide of intemperance, but will man the 
life-boat, and hasten to their rescue. Believing it 



A Plea for Total Abstinence, 171 

her duty to represent Christ, and to incarnate 
Christianity among men ; believing that she i3 sent 
to seek and to save that which is lost, and to despair 
of none, — she will go, with the healing balm of 
Christ's gospel in her hand, to the help of the myri- 
ads who through strong drink are out of the way, 
wounded by this mortal enemy of the race, and 
ready to die. 

But in all she will firmly hold that temperance, 
not total abstinence, is the lazv of the gospel, uni- 
versally obligatory, and that all temperate men are 
to be welcomed as co-workers on equal terms in 
the crusade against drunkenness. On this reason- 
able, broad, and tolerant basis; without exaggera- 
tion, without fanaticism, without digression into 
side-issues upon which good men must needs differ, 
without entangling political alliances ; recognizing 
to the full the awful extent of the evil, — its shame, 
its crime, its curse, its peril to society, to the family, 
to the state, — yet refusing to deal with even so 
tremendous an evil by other than just and tolerant 
methods, on other than sober and scriptural prin- 
ciples, — this Church Temperance Society asks 
to-day the sympathy and support of all Christian 
people. 

Entirely convinced of the soundness of these 
principles, I am, nevertheless, personally a total 
abstainer ; and while fully and freely according to 



172 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

every man the right to decide, in the exercise of his 
Christian liberty, whether or not he will adopt the 
same rule, I earnestly recommend total abstinence 
as a measure of safety amid great perils, and as a 
means of helping forward the reformation so ear- 
nestly desired. 

Let me first state clearly the position of the 
Church Temperance Society on this important 
point. It recognizes and magnifies the place and 
function of total abstinence, not, indeed, as a mas- 
ter, but as a servant ; not as a universal law, but 
as a valuable rule of expediency in multitudes of 
cases. Her constitution declares that it is to be 
"urged on the intemperate (a) As a measure of, 
physical necessity, science and experience uniting 
in the testimony that the drink-craving is kept alive 
by any indulgence, however small, in that which 
has been the cause of it. 

(b) " As the first step to true repentance. 

(c) "As an instrument of reformation/' 

And the Society " recommends " total abstinence 
to the temperate in the following cases : — 

(a) " Whenever placed in special peril. 

(b) " Whenever prudence or medical advice shall 
require it as a measure of preservation. 

(c) "Whenever any, by thus abridging his lib- 
erty, may be able to help his weaker brother, or to 
remove a stumbling-block out of his way. 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 173 

" And finally (d) it is recommended to the young 
as a safeguard against temptation/* \ 

I shall not travel beyond the limits here marked 
out in my plea for total abstinence, and I trust I 
shall throughout " speak as to wise men," and ask 
you to "judge what I say." 

1. In the first place, we may clear the ground 
by observing that the use of alcoholic stimulants, 
in however mild a form, is, in the case of persons 
of a fair degree of health, quite unnecessary. If, 
as the testimony given by competent chemists and 
physiologists tends more and more to render cer- 
tain, alcohol is never under any circumstances a 
food, but always — like strychnine, like arsenic, 
like opium — a poison; if, as there is the very 
highest authority for saying, " perfectly good health 
will always be injured, even by small doses of 
alcohol j" 1 if the utmost that can be said in its 
favor is that in the case of some nervous people 
" who are born into this world to be always ailing, 
yet never ill/' it seems, when taken in the minut- 
est doses, not to be injurious; if, again, "alcohol 
has no claim whatever to be considered a supporter 
of the animal temperature, and no claim whatever 
to be thought a supporter of muscular power ; " 2 if, 
again, the experience of navigators and explorers 

1 Dr. Andrew Clark, senior physician to the London Hospital. 

2 Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S. 



174 A Plea for Total Abstinence, 



and military men has put it absolutely beyond 
question that the man who has to endure hard- 
ship and fatigue amid rigors of extreme cold, or 
under the burning heats of the tropics, will be in- 
comparably better able to bear them if he has been 
and is a total abstainer ; and if, finally, the athlete 
and the boatman and the insurance expert all bear 
similar testimony, — then, in the name of reason 
and of science, I claim your acquiescence in the 
conclusion that the use of alcoholic stimulants is 
unnecessary ; and I claim further that this fact, 
that it is not necessary (being neither a food, nor a 
strength-giver, nor a heat-generator), coupled with 
the additional fact, that, in order to the highest 
physical endurance, a man must be a total ab- 
stainer, constitutes a strong presumptive argument 
in favor of total abstinence as the best rule of 
living. "I speak as to wise men; judge ye what 
I say." 

2. But I urge a more definite and positive 
ground in favor of abstaining from alcoholic stimu- 
lants : the use of them is attended by peril to 
health. 

Here the latest testimony of science is, I think, 
unequivocal. There is the highest scientific au- 
thority for saying that alcohol is dangerous to the 
digestion, dangerous to the blood, dangerous to 
the tissues, — to the digestion, because it retards the 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 175 

process of digestion and assimilation ; to the blood, 
because it impoverishes it, and produces "premature 
decay and death of the blood-corpuscles ; " to the 
tissues, because the blood which supplies them with 
the necessary fluids is by it impoverished, and ren- 
dered unable to meet the demands upon it. Now 
what makes this matter so very serious is that 
there is no danger-signal by which we may be 
warned in time to escape these evil effects of 
alcohol ; but silently, stealthily, insidiously, this 
agent of corruption and disease and death does 
its work, unseen of men, in the secret places of 
the physical organism. 

"The men who suffer most from alcohol," says 
one of the foremost medical authorities of the 
age, 1 "are the men who are habitually taking a 
little too much." "The curse of this is that they 
feel so jolly and comfortable, and full of jokes and 
fun, that other short-sighted people almost envy 
them their condition. . . . These are the men who 
taking a little more than they require, . . . looking 
well, yea, often feeling well, are yet being sapped 
and undermined by this excess. Day by day — 
just as the grass grows, and you cannot see it — 
day by day this little excess — often a little one 
— is doing its work. It upsets the stomach, the 
stomach upsets the other organs, and bit by bit, 

1 Dr. Andrew Clark. 



1 76 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

under this fair and genial and jovial outside, the 
constitution is being sapped ; and suddenly, some 
fine day, this hale, hearty man, whose steps seemed 
to make the earth resound again, . . . tumbles 
down in a fit." The same eminent authority 
stated, that, out of all the patients in the great 
London Hospital on a certain day, seven out of 
every ten owed their ill-health to alcohol, though 
perhaps not one of them was what would be called 
a drunkard ; and he adds that more than three- 
fourths of the disorders in what we call " fashion- 
able life," arise from the use of this very drug. 

Again, I say, nature waves no red flag in our 
faces when we approach the dangerous use of 
alcohol. The work of degeneration and slow 
destruction goes on behind a curtain that even 
science cannot penetrate. And the temperate 
man is its victim as well as the intemperate. 1 

1 " How often," says a prominent homoeopathic authority, "have we, 
as physicians, been called to treat diseases resulting from the habitual use 
of alcoholic beverages in patients who considered themselves temperate 
men or women, and who boasted that they were never under the influence 
of liquor in their lives, while at the very time they were dying of Blight's 
disease, disease of the liver, chronic gastritis, brain or spinal disease, fatty 
degeneration of the heart, chronic bronchitis, with emphysema of -the 
lungs, or even of pulmonary consumption, resulting alone from the long- 
continued use of some of the many fascinating drinks containing alcohol." 
(J. W. Dowling, M.D.) 

The same authority in answer to the question, What constitutes abuse 
in the use of alcohol ? says, M I most unhesitatingly assert that habitual use 
is abuse, even if the quantity be small.'''' 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 177 

Sir Henry Thompson, whose competency as a 
witness no one will question, had no hesitation in 
attributing a very large proportion of the most 
painful and dangerous maladies to the ordinary 
and daily use of fermented drinks, taken " moder- 
ately." Sir William Gull declares that " all 
alcohol . . . injures the nerve-tissues for the time, 
. . . and is certainly deleterious to health. " And 
Dr. W. B. Carpenter, the eminent physiologist, 
warns us that before a man can be justified in 
saying, as so many do, "the little I take does me 
no harm," he " ought to be endowed with the gift 
of prophecy." 

Now, in the face of this testimony of the latest 
medical and physiological science, it becomes a 
question of serious and momentous significance 
for every man to answer, whether he is justified 
in indulging in a luxury so insidiously dangerous. 
What benefit does this indulgence offer in com- 
pensation for so tremendous a risk ? Absolutely 
none. It is not food ; it is not strength ; it is not 
a helper, but a hinderer, of work. The man who 
works with his hands, and the man who works 
with his brains, will both work better, and work 
longer, and work with less waste of power, if they 
abstain entirely from alcoholic stimulants. This 
is indisputable. Am I, then, to purchase the 
exhilaration of an hour at such a risk ? Shall I 



178 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

give a blank check, to be filled up at the pleasure 
of King Alcohol, on the resources of my physical 
manhood, — a draft the full extent of which I can 
never know until the day of reckoning arrives ? 
Shall I give free passport into my system to an 
enemy so deadly, — and all for the fleeting pleas- 
ures of the wine-cup ? Rather will I keep guard 
against such a foe, and cry with disgraced and 
ruined Cassio, " O thou invisible spirit of wine ! if 
thou hast no name to be called by, let us call 
thee Devil ! " "I speak as to wise men ; judge ye 
what I say/' 

3. But there is a peril deeper and deadlier than 
the peril to health, — it is the peril of falling under 
the power of the habit of intemperance. 

The Germans have a fable of a rill which 
babbles as it runs, " Whoever drinks of me will 
become a wild beast." No doubt, it would be an 
exaggeration to apply this fable to the moderate 
use of intoxicants. But it would be simple truth 
to say that alcohol is a fountain of which whoso- 
ever drinks takes the risk of becoming a victim 
of intemperance. Very insidious and sometimes 
very slow indeed is the advance of this fatal 
habit. The tendency is ever to a somewhat in- 
creased indulgence. Like a siren, this habit lures 
men on by its bewitching song, and they follow 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 179 

a little farther, and again a little farther, — all un- 
conscious that they are steadily sailing intp the 
jaws of death. " Seeing the journey is so deadly 
a one, ought a man to begin it at all ? If he 
begin, he is in danger of going on ; and not one 
inch of the way is safe, for alcohol has this pecul- 
iar property, — it always lures onwards/' J 

My friends, and especially my young friends, we 
will do well to beware of what has been well called 
by Archdeacon Farrar " the seductive sorcery of 
drink." Undoubtedly we have the right to drink 
in moderation, if we will, and no man has a right 
to demand total abstinence of us as a test of our 
loyalty to the cause of temperance reform ; but 
we have another right, — the right to scan carefully 
the perils and the temptations and the difficulties 
which surround the moderate drinker. " Wine is 
a mocker/' said the wise man, and wisely did he 
say it. No man intends or expects to yield to its 
" seductive sorcery." Not one of the great army 
of drunkards but would have exclaimed with indig- 
nation, had some prophet told him he would be 
a victim of intemperance, "Is thy servant a dog 
that he should do this thing ? " But the " mocker " 
mocked them, and the sorceress beguiled them, 
and little by little they descended, each one, that 
slippery path which leads to shame and ruin. It 

1 Rev. Stopford Brooke, 



180 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

is the old story of the goddess of the enchanted 
isle, whose magic cup converted all who drank of 
it into swine. Who shall dare say, / am proof 
against this seductive sorcery ? / can drink the 
cup of Circe, and escape its fatal and debasing 
influence ? Has some god from Olympus imparted 
to thee, as Hermes in the fable did to Ulysses, the 
secret by which thou shalt certainly escape the 
*magic spell ? Grant that some men do escape 
the degrading results of which I speak, — can any 
man tell who shall escape ? And will any man 
deny that every one who approaches her enchanted 
isle runs the risk of falling under her fatal and 
degrading influence ? And if every man who 
drinks at all must reckon with this risk of possible 
alcoholism, is not he the wiser man who refuses 
to take such a risk, and steers clear away from the 
isle of Circe, for all it is so enchanting to the eye 
and to every sense ? " I speak as to wise men ; 
judge ye what I say." 

4. But I hasten to higher ground. So far I have 
made my appeal for total abstinence on grounds 
of self-preservation and self-interest, pointing out 
the risks which every man must run who uses 
intoxicants at all. Gladly do I now rise to consid- 
erations of a very different nature, based not on 
self-interest, but on humanity, on charity, on that 
universal brotherhood of men which is Christ's 



A Plea for Total Abstinence, 181 

gift to the world. I appeal to you now, not as 
wise men, but as men of pity. " Bear ye one an- 
other's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. " 

Come down from your high vantage-ground of 
conscious strength, O my brother ! and see these 
your brethren, your fellow-men, lying helpless in 
the grip of this monster Drink, fast bound in a 
bondage more bitter than that of Egypt. Witness 
their unavailing struggles to be free ! See how 
their manhood grows weaker and weaker, till 
almost the last spark of it seems quenched! See 
how their will-power is debauched and drugged, 
till it lies helpless in the dust ! See how all that 
is noble and generous and brave and true grows 
weaker and weaker, and all that is sensual and 
brutal grows stronger, day by day, till Bishop Hall's 
word is fulfilled to the letter, " Alcohol takes away 
the man, and leaves the brute." Look at this spec- 
tacle of shame and ruin, and ponder long and well 
its meaning. Reflect that this wreck of human 
life and hope is only one of a vast multitude of 
similar wrecks which strew the shore of this fair 
land of liberty, — lives and homes and hearts 
wrecked on the treacherous sea of intoxicating 
drink. Picture also the wretchedness, the poverty, 
the shame, the agony, of the families of these un- 
happy victims (they are to be numbered by hun- 
dreds of thousands), families whose garments are 



1 82 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

garments of woe, and whose daily bread is eaten 
in sorrow and tears. Draw the picture as vividly 
and as strongly as the most fervid imagination 
and the most exuberant diction can ; you cannot 
overdraw it ; you cannot by any possibility realize 
one tithe of the actual horror and suffering and 
vice and crime which intemperance is causing in 
this favored land. 

And now I ask you as Christian men, can you 
sit still in presence of such unutterable wretched- 
ness, and stir neither hand nor foot to help ? Once 
this multitudinous wail of human sorrow has en- 
tered into your ears, can it be that the love of 
Christ will not constrain you to spring forward 
to save, if you may, some of these your perishing 
brethren ? If you indeed know the power of 
Christ's cross, you will not despair, even of the 
drunkard. With men his salvation is impossible. 
With God all things are possible. With this hope 
and this faith in your heart, you will labor to res- 
cue if it be only one of the perishing. But, my 
brother, when you go to the drunkard to lift him 
up, and to urge total abstinence on him, will not 
your argument gain immense force if it is backed 
by your personal example? Is there here no call 
to remember the words, " Bear ye one another's 
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ " ? Is it 
quite in the spirit of Christ to say, " You to whom 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 183 

it is so grievous a burden, so tremendous a strug- 
gle, to abstain, must make it ; but /, to whom it is 
no burden, will not bear it with you " ? I speak 
as to Christian men ; " judge ye what I say." 

But my plea is not for those only who have 
already fallen under the tyrannic sceptre of this 
King of Death, — for whom we must needs labor 
under the greatest disadvantages and not seldom 
with very meagre success, — but for that much 
larger class, who are not now drunkards, who may 
not be even occasionally guilty of excess, but who 
constitute the recruiting-ground for the army of 
inebriates. I plead for the young men who, in 
school and in college and in business, are subjected 
to temptations so plausible, so hard to resist ; 
whom " Custom," seconded by false shame, bullies 
into the formation of the habit of taking a drink 
"now afid then," — first step in that downward 
slippery path which has led so many of the bright- 
est intellects and noblest natures to ruin. Facilis 
descensus avemi, — the descent to hell is by a 
smooth and easy path ; but, ah ! rough and steep 
and all but impracticable is the way back from the 
depths of the drunkard's sin. 

Hear Charles Lamb's piteous lament : "Oh, if a 
wish could transport me back to those days of 
youth, when a draught from the next clear spring 
could slake any heats which summer suns and 



184 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

youthful exercise could stir up in the blood, how 
gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the 
drink of children and of childlike, holy hermits ! 
In my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool re- 
freshment purling over my burning tongue — but 
my waking stomach rejects it ! That which re- 
freshes innocence, only makes me sick and faint. 
But is there no middle way betwixt total absti- 
nence and the excess which kills you ? . . . With 
pain I must utter the dreadful truth that there is 
none, none ! " 

To such a complexion, alas ! thousands of the 
youth of our land, now pure and innocent, will 
ultimately come, — cajoled by the " seductive sor- 
cery of drink." I plead for them. And I plead 
also for the laboring-man, who is exposed to even 
greater temptations, confronted by even greater 
perils. See him going forth in the early, morning 
to his daily toil. His way is planted thick with 
those nets of Satan, the rum-shops, night and day 
driving their horrid traffic, — traffic in human lives 
and in the homes and happiness of men ! He re- 
turns in the evening past the same dens of ruin, 
on every corner of the street. Thus the sons of 
toil must run the gantlet of temptation every 
time they walk the streets. Ah, my brothers ! 
pause and think of these your fellows in the battle 
of life. Bear their burdens on your heart a little 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 185 

while. It is no temptation to you to leave your 
comfortable fireside for the gin-palace, but repiem- 
ber that for the workingman the attractions of the 
gin-palace are great. There are brightness and 
warmth and cheerfulness and boon companions 
and games and pictures — none of which perhaps 
he has in his crowded room in the tenement-house. 
He listens to the siren song. He enters the rum- 
shop. The rest need not be told. The tale of 
woe and of poverty and of shame and of crime is 
too long, is too harrowing, is too awful to tell. 
But this I will say, deliberately, and weighing my 
words as I speak, — these ten thousand rum-shops 
among us are eating like a cancer into the man- 
hood and the virtue and the happiness of the 
toiling masses of our population. They are the 
mightiest allies of vice, and the most formidable 
enemies to virtue. They are the hotbeds of crime 
and of all manner of wickedness. And they con- 
stitute a serious menace to the liberties of the 
people. 

What now, my brothers ? Is all this nothing 
to you and me ? Shall we wrap ourselves in the 
mantle of our selfish security (if we are secure), 
and let our neighbors look out for themselves ? 
Shall we sip our sherry after dinner in quiet un- 
concern ? Or shall we rise up and say, " I am my 
brother's keeper. His woe is my woe. His dan- 



1 86 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

ger is my danger. I am a Christian, and nothing 
that pertains to the happiness or the welfare of 
man is foreign to me. If I would fulfil the law 
of Christ, I must bear my neighbor's burdens as 
well as my own. I must ask myself, 'What can 
I do to help and to save the tempted ? ' " 

To ask this question in the sight of God, hon- 
estly and with an earnest purpose, is a great point 
gained for the cause of Reform : it must mean an 
answer which, in some way, will send us forth to 
labor in this holy cause. 

Let me ask you to consider whether we have 
not here a case which calls for that noble self- 
abnegation which St. Paul exemplified when he 
wrote, "If meat make my brother to stumble, I 
will eat no flesh forevermore, that I make not my 
brother to stumble." A man might claim that 
meat was necessary to his bodily vigor, but he can 
make no such claim as regards the use of alcoholic 
drinks. Surely, when we consider the wide-reach- 
ing and mighty influence of example, we may 
well seriously question if we have done the whole 
work of love for our fellow-men, until we put it 
beyond possibility that our indulgence should be 
the occasion of stumbling to any one. The man 
of medical and physiological science, though not 
himself a total abstainer, exclaims, u I wish that 
all the rising generation would be total abstain- 



A Plea for Total Abstinence. 187 

ers," l — and why? Because the perils of drink 
are so tremendous, and the abuse of all forms of 
alcoholic stimulant so great and grievous, that, as 
a patriot, he could not but wish to see the youth of 
the country far removed from the fatal temptation. 
Is it not true that the contagious influence of ex- 
ample would go far to bring about a consummation 
so devoutly to be wished ? And is it not also true 
that every man added to the army of abstainers is 
another weight in the scale in favor of a universal 
perception of the danger and the curse which lie, 
for so many, in the intoxicating cup ? 

I have spoken of it as a self-abnegation. But 
let me not be misunderstood. For myself I do 
not regard total abstinence as a loss, but as a 
gain ; or, if there be occasions when it seems to be 
an act of self-denial, it is so small as not to be con- 
sidered for a moment beside the possibility of 
thereby helping to strengthen a brother-man who 
is struggling against temptation, or to raise up 
one who has fallen under its power. " We that are 
strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, 
and not to please ourselves. ,, 

Still, I close with another utterance of the great 
apostle of the Gentiles, " Let every man be fully 
persuaded in his own mind ; " and if he be not per- 
suaded by the terrible exigencies of the situation 

1 Dr. Andrew Clark. 



1 88 A Plea for Total Abstinence. 

to adopt the rule of total abstinence either for his 
own sake, or for the sake of others, at least let him 
ask God to nerve his arm to strike a vigorous 
blow in some way for the cause of Temperance 
Reform. 



XIII. 

CHRISTIANS THE LIGHT OF THE 
WORLD. 

" Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill can- 
not be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, 
but on a candlestick ; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, 
and glorify your Father which is in heaven." — Matthew v. 14-16. 

IT is scarcely necessary to say that these are the 
words of our blessed Lord, and that they form 
part of the famous " Sermon on the Mount," with 
which He began His ministry on earth. Obvi- 
ously they state an important fact as to the import 
of Christian discipleship : "Ye are the light of the 
world." They also inculcate a momentous duty 
growing directly out of that fact : " Let your light 
shine." 

It shall be my endeavor this evening to explain 
this statement, and to enforce this duty. 

I. There are two reasons why explanation is 
needed. The first is, that the function which is 
here attributed to the disciples of Christ, is else- 
where in the Scriptures declared to belong exclu- 
sively to Christ Himself. Thus, before His birth, 

189 



190 Christians the Light of the World. 

old Zacharias, " filled with the Holy Ghost," proph- 
esied that He should visit the world as "The Day- 
spring from on high." St. Peter salutes Him as 
"The Day-star "of mankind. St. John calls Him 
"The true Light which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." And He Himself while 
yet on earth cried and said, " I am the Light of 
the world." 

How, then, and in what sense, can it be said that 
Christ's disciples are "the light of the world " ? 

The last of the prophets of the old dispensation 
supplies the key to our Lord's meaning. Standing 
on his watch-tower, and scanning the horizon of 
the future with prophetic eye, Malachi saluted the 
coming Messiah as " the Sun of Righteousness," 
who should arise upon a weary and sin-stricken 
world, "with healing in His wings." This, I say, 
explains our Lord's words. He is the " Sun," the 
original source and fount of light. His disciples 
are the luminaries, deriving their light from Him, 
shining with His reflected light, as the moon and 
the planets, which are really opaque bodies, having 
no light in themselves, derive all their brilliancy 
from the reflected light of the sun. T It remains 

1 This is vividly brought out by our Lord when He says of John Bap- 
tist, — not as our Authorized Version has it, " He was a burning and shin- 
ing light," but, — "He was the lamp that is ki7idled and (so) shineth " 
(John v. 35); and by the evangelist in affirming, "He was not The 
Light" (i. 8). 



Christians the Light of the World. 191 

true, however, that though their light all comes 
from that gracious Lord who is "the Sun of Right- 
eousness," yet the disciples of Christ are "the 
light of the world." They are illumined by Christ, 
for that very purpose that they may be the light 
of the world. 

But — and this is the second reason why the 
statement of the text needs explanation — some 
one may say, Are we to suppose that our Lord 
meant these words to apply to all His disciples ? 
Were they not addressed to His twelve apostles ? 
and would it not be presumption to ascribe such 
an office to any others ? Or if we may think 
them applicable to certain great and distinguished 
teachers since the apostles, or possibly even to the 
ordained ministers of the Church, yet surely not 
to private Christians — to Christians in general? 

I answer, undoubtedly they were meant to apply, 
not to the apostles only, not to certain great teachers 
only, not to the ordained ministry only, but to pri- 
vate Christians, to all Christians, men and women 
and children. For the context shows that our 
Lord was speaking to His disciples in general, 
not to the apostles alone, when He said, "Ye 
are the light of the world." Elsewhere, too, He 
describes the subjects of the Gospel Kingdom 
under the term " Children of Light ; " and St. 



192 Christians the Light of the World. 

Paul, writing to the Ephesians, says, "Ye were 
sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the 
Lord ; walk as children of the light." He exhorts 
the Romans to "put on the armor of light;" and 
he bids the Philippians remember that they were 
to "shine as lights " in the midst of a crooked and 
perverse generation. 

It is, then, no decoration of rank, or title of 
honor, conferred upon certain distinguished and 
eminent servants of the Great King — a kind of 
spiritual Legion of Honor ; nor is it an official 
designation of the Ministers of the New Dispensa- 
tion ; but a title and designation belonging to all 
disciples of Christ without distinction. And how 
lofty a title it is ! Christ compares the influence 
of His disciples to Light, the mightiest and the 
most beneficent potency in Nature ! Remember 
that all the beauty of the green earth, all the grand- 
eur of the great and wide sea, and all the matchless 
glory of the sky, are wrought by the subtile and 
exquisite agency of Light. In the beautiful lan- 
guage of a late distinguished writer, "The sun's 
rays are his ministering angels, sent forth to min- 
ister to all things on earth. By their ministry it 
is that the waters of the great deep are spread in 
vapor through the air, that the secret fountains of 
the dew and rain are replenished, and that the dry 
land is gladdened with springs and rivers. As 



Christians the Light of the World. 193 

from the water of the ocean they fertilize the earth, 
and cool the hot air, so from the elements \of the 
crude and formless air itself they rear the living 
plant. The vegetable kingdom of the globe, with 
all its countless forms and orders, is the more than 
magical result of their beneficent care. They build 
the giant oak over our heads, and weave the sweet 
violet at our feet. The forests of a thousand years, 
no less the flowers of a day, are the work of their 
delicate fingers. The endless variety of rich grains 
also, and all the delicious fruits of every clime, are 
but so many transmutations of the invisible air, 
wrought and matured by these busy alchemists of 
the sun, by these shining ministers of material 
good, who, under God, fill all the earth with food 
and gladness." 

Such a ministry, in the moral world, is that 
which the words of Jesus in our text attribute to 
His disciples, when He says, " Ye are the light of 
the world." They are to go forth as rays from the 
Sun of Righteousness into all the earth, to illumine 
its ignorance, to dispel its darkness. By their 
ministry the dew and the rain of heavenly blessing 
are to be distilled upon the parched and thirsty 
hearts of men. By their God-given influence the 
desert of sin and sorrow is to be made to rejoice 
and blossom as the rose, and a sin-cursed earth is 
to be filled with the fruits of righteousness and 



194 Christians the Light of the World. 

peace. What an exalted office, then, is that to 
which the disciples of Christ are appointed ! and 
how grave, how solemn the responsibility attach- 
ing to it ! Oh, think of the ignorance, the super- 
stition, the misery, the sin, which brood like a dark 
cloud over mankind in all lands, even in this 
Christian land, and then consider that the duty of 
dispelling it is laid upon the disciples of Christ ! 
And you and I, my brethren, are disciples of 
Christ. The privilege and the responsibility of 
this blessed ministry for men are ours. 

II. This brings me, secondly, to The Duty in- 
culcated here by the Lord, — " Let your light 
shiner When men light a lamp, they do not put 
it under the bushel-measure, but on the lamp- 
stand, that it may shine upon all that are in the 
house. "So," says our Lord, "let your light 
shine before men." I The possession of light im- 
plies the duty to let it shine for the benefit of the 
world. Shakspeare felt this when he wrote, — 

" Heaven does with us as we with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues 
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 
As if we had them not." 

1 The sense is somewhat obscured in our Version, first by rendering 
the same Greek word by two different English words, and secondly by 
misunderstanding and transposing the u So." The passage should be 
rendered, M Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel- 
measure, but upon the lamp-stand, and it shineth upon all that are in the 
house. Even so let your light shine before men, in order that," etc. 



Christians the Light of the World* 195 

But more. I venture to think we ought to put 
an emphasis on the pronoun, and say, " Let your 
light shine before men," and to draw from this the 
inference that every disciple has a light which is 
peculiarly his own, committed to him to hold forth, 
which if he does not hold forth, there is just that 
much taken away from the sum-total of heavenly 
light in the world. Each one of the countless, 
millions of rays of the sun has its ministry to 
perform ; and each one of the millions of Christ's, 
disciples has likewise his ministry and his work 
in the illumination and benediction of mankind. 
All are not "burning and shining lights/' as was 
John the Baptist ; yet all have some light, if it be 
only a single ray, which they have received from 
the Sun of Righteousness. Oh, how sacred is- 
that light which Christ has given to each of us- 
for the good of the world ! Even a single star,, 
seen through a rift in the storm-cloud, may guide 
the wrecked mariner safe into port. Even a rush- 
light in the window of some lowly hut on the far 
Western prairie may save the traveller who has. 
lost his way in the storm, and is ready to perish. 
Even a glow-worm's light, gleaming out for an 
instant, and then expiring, may reveal the deadly 
serpent coiled up in the path before you. And 
so the weakest and the humblest Christian may 
be a blessing to his fellow-men. — You have heard 



196 Christians the Light of the World. 

of that poor widow of Iona, " whose cottage stood 
on an elevated ridge of a rugged and perilous 
coast, and whose heart was melted by sight of 
wrecked vessels and the wail of perishing human 
beings. She thought, might not her lamp, if 
placed by her window, prove a beacon-light to 
keep some mariner off the coast ? All her life 
after, her lamp burned at her window during the 
winter nights, and the blessing of many a fisher- 
man came upon her who thus did what she could." 
She was infirm and poor, but every day she toiled 
at her spinning-wheel, and with the fruits of her 
labor kept her lamp supplied; and all night the 
light shone out from her cottage on the dark 
waters, giving warning to many a poor sailor who 
else might have perished on the rocks. She let her 
light shine before men. And it was the love, and 
the labor, and the self-sacrifice, of her act which 
gave it a fragrance and a potency in the moral as 
well as the natural world. Go, brother, and do 
thou likewise. With such a spirit as animated 
the widow of Iona, yon may send forth a light by 
your example, by your prayers, by your labors, 
which may warn and save some of your fellow- 
men from making shipwreck of their souls. 

Again, therefore, I say, the duty enjoined in the 
text is binding on every disciple of Christ, without 
any exception whatever. Each is responsible for 



Christians the Light of the World. 197 

letting his light shine, whether it be the light of 
a taper or of a star. Each has his share in the 
great work of dispelling the darkness of the world. 
But now comes the question, What is this light 
that we must let shine ? I answer, nothing which 
is natural to us, or inherent in us ; not our per- 
sonal gifts or qualities. It is derived : it comes 
from above, from Christ, the Sun of Righteous- 
ness. To think otherwise would be to repeat the 
error of the ancients, who supposed that light was 
a substance emitted by the eye. Milton regarded 
it as something from above this world, exclaiming 
in his famous apostrophe, — 

" Hail holy Light, offspring of Heav'n firstborn, 
Or of th' Eternal co-eternal beam, 
May I express thee unblam'd? since God is Light." 

Modern science has taught us that it is indeed the 
" off spring of Heaven," that it comes down from 
above, from the great central source, the Sun 
himself. In all this, Nature is a parable of grace. 
Light in the moral world, in the spiritual sphere, 
is not of earth : it cometh down from above, from 
44 the Father of Lights," whose image Christ is. 
It follows that the light we must let shine before 
men is Christ's light reflected by us. If our faces 
are to shine, it must be because we have been on 
the mount with Moses and Elias, and have beheld 



198 Christians the Light of the World. 

His glory. So shall men take knowledge of us 
that we have been with Jesus. So shall Christ 
shine through us upon the darkness of the world. 
" Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye 
light in the Lord." " He hath called you out of 
darkness into His marvellous light." "God, who 
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of 
the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face 
of Jesus Christ." 

Here, however, we are met by an objection. 
Some man says, " I cannot speak about religion to 
my neighbors ; I have not the gifts to engage in 
evangelistic or missionary labors ; I cannot find 
any church-work that I can do." Ah, it is not 
this which is so much needed, as the influence of 
a consistent and godly example at home and 
abroad. Our Lord's comparison is suggestive of 
silent influence. Light is, as I have said, the 
mightiest potency in Nature. The power of the 
tornado, or the volcano, or the earthquake, which 
we employ as the symbols of mightiness, is as 
nothing compared with that of light. Those stu- 
pendous phenomena are themselves subject to 
solar influence. And yet light works silently, 
noiselessly, unostentatiously. Thus pervasive and 
mighty is the influence of character in the world. 
It is not the man of words, or of much speaking 



Christians the Light of the World. 199 

about religion, or of eloquent tongue in discours- 
ing upon its advantages, who wields the greatest 
influence for God ; nor is it even the man of en- 
ergetic action in the various lines of religious 
activity and church life. Doubtless these are valu- 
able and useful ; though often, if analyzed, it would 
be found that, after deducting the bigotry, and the 
pride of denomination, and the love of praise, and 
the ambition, which are constituent elements in 
many such, the percentage of genuine zeal and 
true religion remaining would be very small indeed. 
But the man who wields the mightiest influence 
is he who though slow of speech, and diffident in 
action, is godly in his life, and Christlike in his 
temper. The light of such a man burns with a 
steady flame. It shines out before men. It can- 
not be hid. " It is no task for suns to shine." So 
with such a man. "Is so and so a Christian ? " 
asked one of George Whitefield. "How should I 
know ? " was the reply : " I never lived with him." 
— Ml have been in his family," said Christian to 
Faithful, speaking of Mr. Talkative, "and have 
observed him at home and abroad ; and I know 
what I say of him is the truth. His house is as 
empty of religion as the w 7 hite of an egg is of 
savor." On the other hand, Lord Peterborough 
said of Fenelon, " If I stay in his house any longer, 
I shall become a Christian in spite of myself." 



200 Christians the Light of the World. 

So potent is the influence of a consistent Chris- 
tian example. 

And now a few words as to the performance of 
this duty. Note these three things: ist, If we 
would let our light shine before men, we must en- 
deavor to forget ourselves, and to watch against all 
forms of self-seeking in the work of Christ. What 
we have to do is to reflect Chrises light ; to let 
Christ shine through us upon the world. Now, 
you know that the most perfect reflectors are 
those which make you almost unconscious of their 
presence. " If the polish of the mirror were per- 
fect," says Mr. Tyndall, "it would be invisible: 
we should simply see in it the images of other 
objects. ,, So those reflect most of the light of 
Christ upon their fellow-men who keep themselves 
and their personal gifts and attainments as much 
out of view as possible. If a man could be without 
spot, he and his personality would be lost sight of 
by men, who would simply see in him the image 
of Christ. No one so utterly disobeys this precept 
of Christ as he who, under pretence of letting his 
light shine before men, parades his talents or his 
attainments, or in any wise obtrudes himself upon 
the attention of his fellow-men. There is no such 
thing in nature as perfect transparency. The 
purest crystal quenches some rays of light. So 
with character. There is no man who perfectly 



Christians the Light of the World. 201 

reflects or transmits the light of Christ : the best 
and purest men quench some of the light of Christ. 
But he is the most useful and the most perfect 
Christian who lets Christ shine through him with 
the least admixture of self. 

2d, If we would let our light shine, we must 
form good habits, and adhere to them : we must 
adopt fixed principles of conduct, and stand to them 
at any cost. In how many ways might this be 
illustrated by the varied forms of human life in 
this great metropolis ! What opportunities men 
of business have of illuminating the darkness of 
many phases of commercial life, by adopting the 
strictest principles of integrity, and adhering to 
them at any sacrifice ! And what a mighty influ- 
ence might Christian men wield for good, if every 
professing Christian would stand fixed and immov- 
able in his standard of uprightness, ready to go 
down as brave Herndon did with his ship, rather 
than surrender to the pleas of expediency, or the 
love of gain ! 

3d, This duty involves self-denial and the cross. 
Letting his light shine before men meant stoning 
and death for St. Stephen. It meant the arena 
and the wild beasts for the Christians of the first 
three centuries. It meant the rack, and the dun- 
geon, and the stake, for hundreds at the Reforma- 
tion. Those holy men, Ridley and Latimer, and 



202 Christians the Light of the World. 

he, too, whose hand was chiefly concerned in our 
Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer, let their light 
shine in the flames at Martyr's Cross at Oxford. 
In some way, and in some degree, this has always 
been true, and is true to-day ; and I say frankly to 
every one who would let his light shine, — under- 
stand that you cannot do it faithfully without self- 
denial and the cross. 

Such is the significance of the words of our 
Lord in the text, and such the nature of the duty 
which they involve. My friends and brethren in 
the Lord, consider, I pray you, their personal 
application. Again I say, they are addressed to 
every disciple of Christ, whatever his station, 
talents, circumstances. You who sit here this 
afternoon, in this sacred place, every one of you 
who is by profession a Christian, to you the 
Saviour and Teacher of men says, " Ye, ye, are 
the light of the world." Fathers and mothers, "ye 
are the light of " your families. Are you letting 
your light shine before your children and your 
domestics, by example as well as by precept ? by 
maintaining your parental authority with both 
firmness and gentleness ? Young men and young 
women, "ye are the light of the" society in which 
you move. Are you letting your light shine before 
your fellows ? Do your irreligious companions 
take knowledge of you that you have been with 



Christians the Light of the World. 203 

Jesus ? or do you give them reason to conclude 
that there is, after all, no appreciable difference 
between a worldling and a Christian ? Business 
men, and especially you that are influential in busi- 
ness circles, "ye are the light of the" commercial 
"world." Are you letting your light shine before 
men ? Do you resist the temptations of commer- 
cial life ? Do you let men see that you have 
learned your standard of commercial integrity in 
the school of Christ ? Natural philosophers tell 
us that there are two classes of bodies, — the trans- 
parent, or those which permit light to pass freely 
through them; and the opaque, which rapidly 
quench the light that enters them. I think there 
is just such a distinction between Christians. We 
have transparent Christians, who freely and gladly 
transmit the holy light they have received to their 
fellow-men ; and opaque Christians, whose light, if 
it shines at all, shines very dimly, because they 
seem to quench the light they receive, as though 
it were given them for their own sake alone. I 
fear the opaque Christians vastly preponderate in 
most of our churches. Nay, I fear there are many 
whose spiritual opacity is so nearly absolute that 
they transmit no light at all, and who must feel it 
a cruel irony to say to them y "Ye are the light of 
the world." 

My Christian brethren, you have engaged to be 



204 Christians the Light of the World. 

servants and soldiers of Jesus Christ ; beware how 
you turn a deaf ear to His commands ! You have, 
with your own mouth and consent, openly before 
the Church, confessed yourselves His disciples ; 
beware, I conjure you, of the danger of dishonor- 
ing that holy name wherewith ye are called ! 
Have a care lest you forfeit your privileges, and 
prove unworthy of your high calling ! Followers 
and disciples of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the 
world ! to you I appeal for compassion on behalf 
of the thousands of your fellow-men still living in 
darkness and unbelief. Representatives of the 
religion of Divine Love ! look in pity on the mul- 
titudes all around you in this great city who are 
without God and without hope in the world. To 
you the ascended Christ has committed the duty 
of enlightening all this darkness. Dare you re- 
pudiate the responsibility, and, Cain-like, say, 
"Am I my brother's keeper ? " 

A visitor once suggested to the watchman at 
the Calais lighthouse the possibility of one of his 
lights going out. "Never, sir ! " was the reply. 
"Why, yonder, where nothing can be seen, there 
are ships going by to every part of the world. If 
to-night one of my burners went out, within six 
months would come a letter from India, or from 
Africa, or from America, saying that on such a 
night, at such an hour, at such a minute, the light 



Christians the Light of the World. 205 

burned dim, the watchman neglected his post, and 
vessels were put in jeopardy on the high £eas. 
Ah, sir ! sometimes in the dark nights and in 
stormy weather I look out upon the sea, and feel 
as if the eye of the whole world was looking at my 
light?' Oh for such a sense of responsibility as 
that ! Oh that you and I, my brethren, might feel 
that if we neglect our duty, and suffer our light to 
burn dim, we are putting in peril the characters of 
our fellow-men ! Oh that we could realize — I will 
not say that the eye of the whole world is upon us, 
but that the eye of our Lord Jqsus Christ is upon 
us, to see whether or not we are letting our light 
shine before men that they may see our good 
works, and glorify our Father in heaven ! 



XIV. 
THE FUNCTION OF PAIN. 

" Why is my pain perpetual ? " — Jeremiah xv. 18. 

THIS piteous lament of the persecuted prophet 
may fitly represent the anguished cry which 
rises to heaven from suffering humanity, from age 
to age, from generation to generation. Listen, and 
you shall hear it echoing through the long-drawn 
aisles of the Past, — a perpetual miserere, pouring 
forth its sad strains into the ear of the Omnipotent. 
In all lands, under all skies, in all times, the 
same mournful wail is heard, — a ceaseless dirge of 
woe, day and night, from ten thousand times ten 
thousand hearts, struggling with adversity, battling 
with disease, staggering under the weight of sor- 
row or suffering. " Why is my pain perpetual ? " 
The question is a natural one : it cannot be re- 
pressed ; nor can reason condemn, though it may 
be unable to answer it. Why do these dark shad- 
ows perpetually fall across the path of human life ? 
What is the meaning of these sharp and painful 

experiences ? Have they any function in the evo- 

206 



The 'Function of Pain. 207 

lution of life, of character, of history, of the race ? 
And, if so, what is it ? 1 

It would almost seem that men had abandoned 
the attempt to solve these problems ; for by com- 
mon consent, pain and disease, suffering and 
sorrow, are called " mysteries, " — " dark and in- 
scrutable mysteries/' Now, it is impossible to 
deny altogether the darkness and the mystery ; for 
cases are common of suffering and of disease in 
the presence of which we can only bow our heads 
as before the inscrutable, and say, " I was dumb : 
I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it." 
But they are not all darkness and incomprehensi- 
bility. These " mysteries " are also " masteries " — 
masterful forces in the education and exaltation of 
humanity. Have you ever considered what kind 
of a world this would be if there were no pain here, 
no sick-beds, no sorrow-stricken homes ? Have 
you ever reflected that these " inscrutable mys- 
teries " are the chosen instrumentalities for fash- 
ioning the highest types of character, both in the 
sufferer himself and in those who minister to his 
suffering? Have you ever considered how much 
of the divinest patience and self-sacrifice that have 
ever mirrored Christ to men, how much of the 
loftiest heroism and courage that have ever glori- 
fied human nature, have been finely fashioned on 
the anvil of suffering ? It is written of the Son 



208 The Function of Pain. . 

of God, that " He learned obedience by the things 
which He suffered." Yea, He was "made perfect 
through suffering." Even He did not ascend to 
His glory till He had first descended to the humili- 
ation and the pain of the garden and the cross. 
And has any child of man ever fully learned the 
lessons of life except in the school of suffering ? 
Has any human character ever ascended into the 
region of perfection except by the path which leads 
down through the valley and the shadow, through 
Gethsemane and Calvary, up to Olivet ? 

There are some excellent persons who would 
persuade us that Christ died to deliver us from 
pain and disease as well as from sin. But while, 
if we look to the ultimate result of redemption, 
this is doubtless true ; yet it were a grievous error 
to forget that what Jesus said to Pilate is true of 
all our earthly sufferings (sickness and pains as well 
as sorrows and afflictions), "Thou couldest have 
no power at all against Me, except it were given 
thee from above." Pain and disease did, it is 
true, come into the world as the attendants and 
servants of sin ; but it is pity indeed if we have 
not learned that the Lord has made them His 
ministers and His servants, even as He made the 
thorns and thistles, the labor and the sweat, which 
resulted from the fall, the means of the develop- 
ment of the faculties and powers of man, the 



The Function of Pain. 209 

fountains of progress and civilization. Our Chris- 
tian hope points to the coming era, when there 
shall be "no more pain, neither sorrow nor cry- 
ing ; " when " God shall wipe away all tears " from 
His children's eyes : but that will be in the "new 
heaven" and the " new earth ; " that will be in the 
perfect temple of the living God ; that will be 
among men and women who have passed through 
the school of suffering, and learned its lessons. 
Then pain and sorrow may be abolished, as the 
scaffolding is removed from the finished building ; 
but to remove them out of the world now, would 
be to pull down the scaffolding, without which it 
is impossible to rear the building. The earth was 
once a stranger to pain, and it will be again ; but 
in the former case sin had not entered, and so 
perhaps pain was not needed ; and in the latter, 
sin will be abolished because the lesson of pain 
will have been fully learned. A sinless race may 
not need this discipline, — we know not, — but 
certainly a fallen race like ours can only climb 
back to God and holiness by the ladder of trial 
and temptation and suffering. 

14 ' Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 
Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
Whereon our feet firm planting, 
Nearer God the spirit climbs, 
And hath its eyes unsealed." 



2io The Function of Pain. 

Let us, then, be sure of this : a world without 
suffering would be a world without much that is 
most angelic, most divine. Call it "a huge hospi- 
tal," if you will, as it now is ; but, if so, it is a 
hospital in which God's angels are not dimly seen, 

— charity and self-sacrifice and consecrated skill, 

— ministering to the sufferers. Yes, and the suf- 
ferers themselves are changed. By and by we 
see the halo of holy patience circling their brows ; 
something more than submission — acquiescence, 
cheerful acquiescence in the Father's will. But 
had there never been pain and suffering, what a 
different world it would have been ! All marsh 
and meadow ; all plain and prairie ; no towering 
cliffs and yawning chasms; no heaven-kissing 
Mont Blanc ; no thunderous Niagara ; no valley 
of the Yosemite — a dead-level world ! Those 
lofty heights of heroism and patience which now 
delight the eye in the retrospect of the past, would 
sink into monotonous stretches of commonplace 
lives. Those names writ large by the pen of 
history, and made radiant by the light of self-for- 
getting devotion, would disappear with the pain 
or the suffering or the calamity that made them 
great. The glorious company of the apostles, the 
goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army 
of martyrs, the brightest constellations of virtue 
and of valor, which now illumine the records of 



. The Function of Pain. 2 1 1 

the race, would vanish from the firmament of 

human experience. Yea, the very form of -the 

Saviour Himself would be seen no longer ; for 

what would be the story of His life, if the fasting 

and temptation, the agony and bloody sweat, the 

cross and passion, were eliminated ? In the light 

of such thoughts, the clouds begin to break away : 

and though we may not dream of solving the 

mighty mystery of the existence of evil, yet this 

I think we may dare to say, since God is God, that 

evil has been made the occasion of larger good ; 

that He who maketh the wrath of man to praise 

Him, will also make the malice of the Devil to 

praise Him ; and that the poet had right when 

he sang of 

" Greater good because of evil, 
Larger mercy through the fall." 

To doubt this would indeed be disloyalty ! 

We may, therefore, thank God for pain, for suf- 
fering, for sorrow. Whichever has been our lot, 
depend upon it we are, or if not, we ought to be, 
the better, the wiser, the richer, for it. If we 
take it patiently, as the good will of our good God, 
then will it prove a blessing. Then will tribula- 
tion be what the word implies it ought to be, — 
the tribulum, the flail by which the harvest of life 
will be threshed, and the wheat separated from 
the chaff. Then will pain no longer seem a cruel 



212 The Function of Pain* 

infliction ; for we shall see that it is the chisel 
in the hands of the Divine Artist, by which, out 
of the rough block of our sinful, selfish humanity, 
the form, not of the Apollo, but of the Christ, will 
be made to emerge. Then will sorrow be the cru- 
cible in the hands of the Divine Master, wherein 
the dross of the soul will be purged away, and the 
gold refined. 

Such, then, is the function of pain and its kin- 
dred evils, sorrow and affliction, in God's economy 
of life. Surely a noble function, and one which, 
when we steadily reflect upon it, goes far to take 
away the strangeness and the mystery of it; to 
make of it, in fact, a " mystery " in the New-Testa- 
ment sense of the word ; something once hidden, 
but now revealed, — revealed in the light of the 
life and the passion of Him who has illumined 
earth's darkest valleys, even the " Valley of the 
Shadow of Death. " 

But let us not make the mistake of supposing 
that tribulation — this threshing of the soul — in 
any of its forms necessarily produces the results 
which I have described. These are the peaceable 
fruits which the gracious Father desires and de- 
signs that they should bring forth. These are 
what they are fitted to produce. But we must re- 
member that the material to be fashioned in this 
case is a free, self-determining human soul, whose 



The Function of Pain. 213 

freedom cannot be violated without destroying its 
very essential fibre. All our comparisons fail us 
here. The artist's chisel works upon a block of 
marble, but the chisel of pain works upon a soul 
that is free ; and with reverence be it said, even 
the Divine Artist cannot carve an image of Christ 
out of these souls of ours unless they yield them- 
selves to His will. The goldsmith can purge out 
the dross, and refine the gold, by simply putting it 
into his crucible, and keeping it there long enough ; 
but even Christ, the Refiner and Purifier, and Re- 
deemer of the world, cannot purge away the sub- 
tile dross of pride and selfishness from our earthly 
nature by the fire of suffering, if we blindly and 
obstinately resist His Holy Spirit. 

The effect, then, of trial and affliction, whether 
bodily or mental, depends upon the way in which 
it is received. It may embitter, instead of sweet- 
ening, the spirit. It may harden, instead of soft- 
ening, the heart. And then the gracious purpose 
of Him who chasteneth not in wrath, but in mercy, 
will be frustrated and turned aside by the perver- 
sity of man. There is no necessary virtue in pain, 
as such, to refine and purify the soul. If that were 
so, the- ascetic austerities of monasticism and of 
Buddhism would be justified. But no : it is when 
sorrow and suffering are accepted as God's will, 
given by His hand, appointed by His wisdom, that 



214 The Function of Pain. 

they become instruments whereby character is 
chiselled into the image of Christ. It is not for 
man to inflict pains and losses upon himself, in 
the expectation of thereby growing pure and holy. 
That were to take the chisel into his own clumsy 
hands. No. He must leave it to God, who will 
appoint the best means of developing the Divine 
within us. His unerring Providence will send just 
the measure of chastisement that we need, and 
just in the way we need it, and just at the time we 
need it, and just as long as we need it. This is 
the hard, hard lesson of faith, — to trust stead- 
fastly at all seasons and under all circumstances 
in the wise providence of God, and never to doubt 
either His care or His love. 

To strengthen our faith, then, let us recall some 
of the utterances of those holy men of old who 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, — 
passages in which the causal connection between 
suffering and holiness is distinctly stated. Saith 
the wise man, "The fining pot is for silver, and 
the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the 
hearts." Saith the afflicted patriarch, "Though 
He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." "When He 
hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Saith 
the prophet in the name of the Lord, " I will bring 
the third part through the fire, and will refine them 
as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is 



The Function of Pain. 215 

tried ; they shall call on My name, and I will hear 
them : I will say, It is My people ; and they shall 
say, The Lord is my God." Our Lord said, "I 
am the vine, ye are the branches," and added, 
" Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, 
that it may bring forth more fruit." St. Peter, 
the foremost of the apostles, writes, " Though now 
for a season ... ye are in heaviness through mani- 
fold temptations," it is that "the trial of your faith, 
being much more precious than of gold that per- 
isheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found 
unto praise, and honor, and glory, at the appear- 
ing of Jesus Christ." St. James bids us " count 
it all joy" when we fall into divers temptations; 
" knowing this, that the trying of your faith work- 
eth patience. But let patience have her perfect 
work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing." St. Paul exclaims, "We glory in trib- 
ulation," "knowing that tribulation worketh pa- 
tience ; " and again, " Our light affliction, which is 
but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory ; " and yet again, 
"Though our outward man perish, yet the inward 
man is renewed day by day." And that inspired 
writer who penned the sublime Epistle to the 
Hebrews, declares with emphasis that "whom the 
Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every 
son whom He receiveth," giving as the reason, 



216 The Function of Pain. 

that chastisement produces "the peaceable fruits 
of righteousness/' 

Side by side with their words let us place the 
deeds, the examples, of these holy men of old. 
One can see in the mirror of their writings, as 
well as in the record of their lives, that these 
chosen ones were, like their Divine Master, "made 
perfect through suffering/' or at least that their 
sufferings and afflictions had led them far up the 
path whose goal is perfection. Nothing is more 
characteristic of the New-Testament writers than 
the subtile power they possess to impress the 
reader with a conviction of the reality of the ex- 
periences they describe. The intensity of their 
conviction glows and burns on every page. When 
they assert the purifying effect of suffering, we 
feel that they are testifying out of the fulness of 
a personal knowledge. Here is no "cunningly 
devised fable," no fine-spun theory, no airy specu- 
lation, or poet's dream, but the transcript of their 
own experience. They speak that they do know, 
and testify that they have seen and felt in their 
own hearts and lives. When the great apostle, 
like a mighty warrior, challenges the leagued host 
of his foes — tribulation, distress, persecution, 
famine, peril, the sword — to separate him from 
the love of Christ, we feel, with the certainty of 
intuition, that he is not an actor playing a part, 



The Function of Pain. 217 

but a veritable soldier of the Cross in the midst 
of the arena of conflict, battling with this confed- 
eracy of foes, and coming off " conqueror and 
more than conqueror " through Him that loved 
him. That sublime passage describes his own 
victory over pain and persecution and trial. But 
not these holy men of old alone. Men and women 
of our time, too, a noble army, have ascended 
with Jesus into the holy Mount by the same 
arduous path, leaving us an example that we 
should follow their steps. How often have we 
seen the purifying power of pain and loss, of 
sorrow and trial! How often have we marked 
in the life of some patient sufferer the gradual 
unfolding of the Christlikeness, till at length the 
crown of thorns has been changed into a mitre 
of glory, on which we could trace the words, 
" Perfect through suffering ! " Yes, even this age, 
which we are wont to style an age of unbelief, 
but which is also, in some directions, an age of 
triumphant faith, can boast a great company of 
whom it may be said, — 

" They climbed the steep ascent of heaven 
Through peril, toil, and pain : 
O God ! to us may grace be given 
To follow in their train ! " 

You may, therefore, strengthen your wavering 
faith, O sufferer ! in the beneficent purpose of 



218 The Function of Pain, 

this, God's strange economy, by lifting your eyes 
to the great " cloud of witnesses " who have trod 
the same rough and thorny path. And then from 
these, whose song of triumph swells upon the ear 
of faith like the voice of many waters, turn to the 
spectacle presented by the disciples of cultivated 
unbelief in all its manifold forms. This boasted 
Culture, which lifts itself up in proud soi-disant 
superiority to Christianity, what has it to say in 
the presence of pain, of sorrow, of calamity? It 
moves, I grant, as with the majesty of a queen, 
it speaks as with the tongue of an angel, in the 
lecture-hall and the studio, in the senate and the 
forum ; but, ah, in the sick-room and the hospital, 
in the chamber of death, and in the house of 
mourning, its voice is dumb, its hand is powerless! 
It may take up the parable of the ancient stoics, 
though in a spirit far less admirable than they, 
and counsel absolute insensibility to pain and 
suffering, whether of ourselves or others, as the 
only passport to perfection. But this is the best 
it can do : it makes no approach to the conception 
of the gospel, that tribulation is the God-appointed 
path to perfect peace and perfect holiness. It 
not seldom follows the stoic into the philosophy 
of despair, boldly inculcating with Schopenhauer 
and Hartmann the wisdom of suicide as a refuge 
from the hopeless calamities of life ; or else, with 



The Function of Pain. 219 

other " lights of philosophy," avoiding so shock- 
ing a word as self-destruction, it baptizes the same 
act with a beautiful Greek name, " Euthanasia," 
and points to this as the reasonable refuge of 
those unfortunates whose diseases are incurable, 
or who deem their sufferings unendurable. 

Such examples of the impotence of the wisdom 
which refuses the illumination that descends from 
above, may well kindle our gratitude for the diviner 
wisdom which glows like a radiant star upon the 
brow of Christianity. This knows no such word 
as " despair." Its God is " the God of Hope." Its 
evangel sheds light upon the darkest experiences 
of pain or suffering that ever fell to the lot of man. 
Its message to the suffering children of God is 
this: — 

Your suffering, whatever its form, whatever its 
intensity, is not "without your Father." You are 
in His hands. He does not forget you ; He will 
never leave or forsake you ; He only designs "thy 
dross to consume, and thy gold to refine." Look 
intently, O sufferer ! and you will see pain slowly 
transfigured before your gaze till it takes on the 
very features of Him of whom the prophet said, 
" He shall sit as a Refiner and Purifier of silver." 
You are suffering, moreover, it may be, not for 
your own benefit alone, but for that of others. 
There is a principle of vicariousness in human suf- 



220 The Function of Pain. 

fering. Let me illustrate by a familiar instance. A 
poor traveller falls ill of fever all alone in the South- 
American swamps. There he lies for days in a 
wretched hut, quenching his thirst with the waters 
of a pool close at hand. At last this pool dries up ; 
and with extreme difficulty, the sick man crawls to 
another, half a mile distant. Its water is so bitter 
he can scarcely drink it ; but he must drink it, or 
die of thirst. That afternoon he could not think 
why he felt stronger than for many weeks. The 
next day he drank more abundantly of the bitter 
pool ; and still, the more he drank, the stronger he 
grew, till he was entirely restored ; then he found 
that a tree had fallen into the water, which gave it 
its bitterness, and gave it also its power of cure. 
And this is the way in which one of the most im- 
portant medicines now in use was discovered, — a 
medicine which has saved thousands and thousands 
of lives which must else have perished. Even so 
hath God appointed that some of us should drink 
the bitter waters of affliction or of pain, that others 
may be given spiritual health and salvation. My 
brother, when you are perplexed by what seems 
your hard lot, remember the poor traveller in the 
lonely wilds, and try to so drink your bitter waters, 
that men, beholding your patience and cheerfulness, 
may glorify God. Finally, for your consolation 
and encouragement, remember that you are not 



The Function of Pain. 221 

alone in this experience of suffering. The holy 
apostle counted all things but loss that he might 
know "the fellowship of [Christ's] sufferings. " He 
felt himself nearest to his Divine Master when he 
was drinking the bitter cup of suffering. O sol- 
dier of Christ ! yours is the same strong consola- 
tion, — yea, a much stronger one; for if you look 
up from your own bed of suffering, you will see 
One close by, a companion in pain, in all points 
tempted like as you, able, therefore, to be touched 
with a feeling of your infirmities, who can have 
compassion on you in each experience, and whose 
compassions fail not. It is the Man of Sorrows : 
it is the Captain of your Salvation. 



XV. 
THE FATHERHOOD AND THE FAMILY. 

" The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ \ of whom the whole fam- 
ily in heaven and earth is named." — Ephesians iii. 14, 15. 

THE natural interpretation of this language is, 
that God's children on earth and in heaven, 
men and angels and redeemed saints ; the Church 
militant and the Church triumphant, and the an- 
gelic throng, —all constitute one family, owning 
one Father, and having one home, according to the 
sentiment of those familiar lines, — 

" Angels and living saints and dead, 
But one communion make." 

Such a representation of the relation of God's 
children to each other is entirely in accordance 
with the teaching of Holy Scripture ; and it is, 
moreover, a very profitable view to be presented. 
For it cannot but re-animate the Christian's droop- 
ing spirits ; it cannot but strengthen his faith ; it 
cannot but tend to counteract the overweening 
influence of earthly things ; it cannot but help 

to spiritualize his affections, — to dwell upon the 
222 



The Fatherhood and the Family. 223 

thought that he is not alone in the conflict and 
the race, but is joined with the great family of 
God in all ages and in all worlds: — 

" One family we dwell in Him, 
One Church, above, beneath, 
Though now divided by the stream, 
The narrow stream of death." 

But I am persuaded it is not this truth which 
the apostle means to express here. The sense 
was missed by our translators. By common con- 
sent of the best scholars, the passage is rendered 
thus : " I bow my knees unto the Father, from 
whom every family in heaven and on earth derives 
its name." 

There is a connection between the word for 
"father" and that for " family" in the Greek 
which we cannot reproduce in translation, but 
which may be illustrated by the analogous connec- 
tion which exists in English between " creator" 
and " creature." Every family (TtaxQid) derives its 
name from the Father (rtazriQ), Translated thus 
this passage contains three topics upon which I 
desire to dwell: the Fatherhood of God, — the 
fatherhood of man, — and the perpetuity of the 
family. 

I. First, then, I find here a remarkable and 
most interesting statement of the Fatherhood of 



224 The Fatherhood and the Family. 

God. It is this : that the prototype of all human 
fatherhood is found in the Divine. God is the 
true and perfect Father, of whom all other fathers 
are but faint likenesses. It is not, then, by way of 
illustration that God is called "The Father. ,, It 
is not a word selected in condescension to human 
weakness, to be in due time superseded by some 
other, but it is the word which properly describes 
His relation to His creatures, and for which no 
substitute can be found, since it expresses a funda- 
mental relation. 

The idea of Fatherhood is essential to the na- 
ture of God : it cannot be left out. He is truly 
and literally "the Father" — the "All-Father." 
No human father fulfils the import of the great 
name he bears. Let us mark it well : the name 
and the relation it expresses were not taken from 
our creature-life, and applied to the Creator, but 
the reverse is true. As one of the old fathers hath 
it, " Not from us did it ascend to heaven, but from 
heaven came down to us." Let me illustrate. 
Far off beyond the Rocky Mountains, in the valley 
of the Humboldt River, the traveller sometimes 
sees, in certain conditions of the atmosphere, 
some earthly object — even an entire landscape — 
painted as if by an angel's hand upon the clouds. 
Not thus is this word " Father " applied to God — 
an earthly image upon a heavenly ground. Ah, 



The Fatherhood and the Family. 225 

then, dear as it is to the ear of man, it were no 
better than a cruel mirage mocking poor travel- 
lers through this desert of time ! But no : it is a 
heavenly image reflected in earthly relations ; the 
application of the word "father" to man is bor- 
rowed from its divine and heavenly meaning. It 
is a dewdrop fallen from the skies, which mirrors 
in its tiny surface the whole "scope of heaven." 

But is this' conception of the Fatherhood of 
God peculiar to Christianity ? No, not absolutely 
peculiar : some glimmerings of it, at least, were 
found in other religions. Thus, the ancient Greeks, 
while they peopled every grove and stream and 
mountain with divinities, yet looked up to one 
who was before and above all these inferior deities ; 
and him they named Zeus, father of gods and men. 
St. Paul could quote to the Athenians a saying of 
one of their own poets, " We are also His offspring." 
The Romans also recognized the same truth in 
their name for the supreme divinity, — Jupiter, 
Zeus-Pater. Our Scandinavian ancestors dimly 
perceived the unity of God : they felt that though 
all visible things must perish, and so the gods 
who protected them, yet there was one above 
them all who could not perish. They perceived, 
too, that man was not an orphan in the universe — 
that he had a father in heaven; and so they 
dreamed of Odin, All-Father, who had his dwelling 



226 The Fatherhood and the Family. 

in the blue, unchangeable ether. Tiu, they called 
him, from Tuisco, "heaven;" and they dedicated 
a day to his honor, — -"Tuesday." Man was in 
their beautiful mythology " the child of Tuisco 
(Heaven) and Hertha (Earth). " 

I say nothing of Judaism, only because it goes 
without saying, that the idea of this relation was 
latent in it, that it came sometimes to the sur- 
face, especially in the later developments of the 
religion, in the psalmists and prophets, though 
never in its fulness, never in its universality. 

It remained for Christianity to shed a flood 
of light on this whole subject. It transformed 
a guess into a certainty; a dream into reality; a 
dim and shadowy outline into a clear and definite 
image. Jesus Christ has come to reveal the 
Father unto men, and to teach them that He is 
the Father, not of a race, nor of an elect number, 
— a kind of spiritual aristocracy, -—but of all with- 
out distinction. He has taught them, furthermore, 
to approach Him with filial confidence, sure of a 
welcome, even when they have wandered farthest. 
He has showed them that the heart of the Eternal 
beats in genuine sympathy for His earthly chil- 
dren ; and thus it becomes true, as the great 
Niebuhr said, that the God of the Bible is " heart 
to heart." 

But we must never for a moment forget that 



The Fatherhood and the Family, 227 

Christ came, not only to reveal to man his filial 
relation to God, but to reconstitute it on a new 
basis, even that of His own atonement and media- 
tion. Adam walked in Eden as a " son of God/' 
happy in his knowledge of his sonship ; but when 
he sinned, he felt himself an alien and a stranger, 
and fled from the face of his Father. Why ? 
Because filial confidence had given place to dis- 
trust and shame and fear. Christ came, the sec- 
ond Adam, to undo the work of the first. By His 
mediation and sacrifice, He restores to man his 
position as an accepted and beloved son, in whom 
the Father is well pleased ; banishes fear and 
shame and distrust ; gives back the confidence and 
trustfulness of a dear child ; removes the flaming 
sword" from the gate of paradise, and re-opens it 
freely for man's return. Our sonship rests now 
on a new basis, — even the Person of our Media- 
tor : we are "all the children of God, by faith in 
Christ Jesus." "To as many as received Him, to 
them gave He power to become the sons of God." 
It is the spirit "of His Son" whom God sends 
forth into our hearts crying " Abba " Father. Least 
of all should we forget this to-day, when we have 
just come from Olivet, where we have witnessed 
His glorious ascension, and recalled His words, 
" I ascend unto My Father and unto your Father." 
Yes, first His Father, and then and therefore ours. 



228 The Fatherhood and the Family. 

II. I pass to the second thought suggested by 
the text, — that, namely, which relates to the 
fatherhood of man. 

" I bow my knees," says the apostle, " to the 
Father, from whom every family on earth is 
named. ,, Behold the dignity and glory of the 
family ! It is heavenly and divine in its origin. 
Like the tabernacle in the wilderness, it is made 
after the pattern of things in the mount of God ; 
for see what the apostle says : Every family here 
derives its name from the Father there, as every 
father derives his title from the same source. 
This earthly fatherhood, then, is the human re- 
flex of the fatherhood of God, and, as such, is an 
integral part of the original image of God, in which 
man was made. Defaced, indeed, it was by the 
fall ; but it is restored by the redemption which is 
in Christ Jesus. What, then, is the dignity, yea, 
the divinity, of the parental relation ! And how 
great reason is there that men should take heed 
how they exercise it — how they fulfil the holy 
office of "father!" We speak of the Christian 
ministry as the sacred office, and so it is most 
sacred ; but it is not the only sacred office : and 
that line which we draw between things sacred 
and secular, is wrongly drawn if it do not include 
the family in the former. 

My brethren, the office of father or mother is a 



The Fatherhood and the Family. 229 

sacred office, and you who occupy it are conse- 
crated of God to a holy priesthood. See that you 
magnify your office ! Have always printed in 
your remembrance, into how high and holy and 
solemn a ministry you are called ; that is to say, 
to represent in your person to your family the 
Great Father of all ; to be to those dependent on 
you, as far as human weakness will allow, such a 
father as He is. Ah ! how this heavenly jewel is 
trampled under foot of men, who, instead of fathers, 
are tyrants, practising in the noonday of Christi- 
anity the unkindness, or the neglect, or the harsh- 
ness, or even the cruelty, which belong to 
polytheism and infidelity. Let our text supply to 
us a stimulus to be faithful to our holy office as 
parents, and to stint neither care nor prayer, that 
our families here on earth may be, at least in 
some faint degree, a reflex of the families in heaven. 
There is a little sheet of water at the eastern 
end of the Yosemite valley, in which one may see, 
if we visit it before the sun has touched it, a 
most wonderful and entrancing sight : in the 
surface of that tiny lake, polished to an almost 
preternatural smoothness by the hand of God 
Himself, is mirrored the whole grand amphitheatre 
of gigantic walls and towering cliffs, varying from 
two thousand to five thousand feet in height, — 
the entire valley of the Yosemite, some eight 



230 The Fatherhood and the Family. 

miles in length, and with it the over-arching sky, 
reflected with absolute exactness, and with such 
vividness that every tint of the forest, and every 
crevice and stain in the cliffs, and every hue of 
the floating clouds, is distinctly reproduced. We 
may not hope ever to see an earthly family which 
shall be such a mirror as that, which shall reflect 
the families in heaven with any such perfectness 
as that. But surely our earthly families may re- 
flect something ol heaven —something of the peace 
and the joy and the love which reign in the 
many mansions above. Surely we may at least by 
God's blessing so order our homes that they need 
not always be like a turbid lake, so tossed and so 
unquiet as never to show any reflection of heaven. 
III. I come finally to the third reflection sug- 
gested by our text, — -the perpetuity of the family. 
" Every family in heaven and on earth :" — then 
there are families in heaven, differing, no doubt, 
greatly from those on earth, but still preserving 
the essential elements of the family. If this be 
so, we may say of the family that it is an enduring 
institution, resting on the fundamental principles 
of humanity, and that, as the gospel gives absolute 
assurance of the immortality of the soul, so it gives 
also the assurance of the perpetuity of the family. 
What a revelation of the blessed state of the re- 
deemed ! Here is something more than the recog- 



The Fatherhood and the Family. 231 

nition of friends : here is family life transfigured 
and perpetuated in heaven ! 

The most beautiful thing on this earth is the 
spectacle of a happy Christian family. It is a relic, 
the most precious relic, of paradise. The purest 
and the deepest and the most refreshing wells of 
joy in this world of heat and dust and thirst are 
those which lie beneath the dear rooftree of home. 
We Anglo-Saxons boast of our word "home," and 
of the thought it embodies, as something p'ecul- 
iarly our own. But let us not give to race that 
which belongs to mankind. The thought of home, 
with all the precious things it signifies, belongs to 
our common humanity. It is dear to all races and 
to all kindreds of men. 

But how often are those sweet well-springs 
embittered or dried up ! A son is wayward and 
rebellious, and wanders far from God. A daughter 
is frivolous and vain, and goes astray. Sin stains 
the purity of the home, or misfortune crushes the 
head of the family, or death smites down one of its 
members ; and so it comes to pass that the ideal of 
the family is never attained in this world of blight 
and rust and hail-storm. But it shall be attained 
yonder ! There are families in heaven, and all ele- 
ments of disturbance and decay are there removed. 
What a strong consolation this thought affords, 
also, to those of us whose families are breaking up 



232 The Fatherhood and the Family. 

or broken up, scattering or scattered. Follow for 
a little distance the fortunes of a family. They 
gather, we will suppose, in a bright country-home, 
father and mother, sons and daughters, all bright 
and hopeful and happy, — the young full of enthu- 
siasm for the untried voyage before them, the old 
full of joy in the happiness and hope of the young. 
A few years pass, and again we see them gathered, 
it may be, in the same scene ; but how changed 
already ! Lines — the well-known lines of care — 
traced on the brow, and gray hairs here and there, 
tell the story of battle and bereavement in the 
experience of life. There is a vacant chair or 
more, and the tears on more than one cheek bear 
silent witness to the sad associations that the fam- 
ily reunion recalls. Years roll on ; and one after 
the other is missed, till the number up there is 
greater than the number here, and the home- 
centre must be sought beyond the river. At 
length only one is left, a lonely pilgrim, tottering 
under the weight of years, and steadily approach- 
ing the brink of the cold, dark stream. To such a 
one, how sweet this gospel-message about families 
in heaven ! to know that, fast as the Christian fam- 
ily breaks up here, it is re-forming in a better 
home there ; and to be assured that the life there 
shall not be an utterly new and strange one — that 
this at least will remain, the family. 



I he Fatherhood and the Family. 233 

Such thoughts suit well the season which is 
consecrated to the contemplation of the ascended 
Lord. We would fain obey the injunction of our 
Church, and "in heart and mind thither ascend " 
to the glory of the better land. His own words 
come to help our contemplation : let these be 
remembered, though every thing else I have said 
to-day shall be forgotten. " Let not your heart 
be troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also in 
Me. In My Fathers house are many mansions ; 
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and 
prepare a place for you, I will come again, and 
receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there 
ye may be also." 



XVI. 
THE VISION OF THE THRONE. 

{FOR TRINITY SUNDAY.) 

" Behold, a throne was set in heaven , and One sat on the throne" 
— Revelation iv. 2. 

THAT sublime passage, which is the appointed 
epistle for Trinity Sunday, naturally attracts 
our earnest and reverent attention to-day. We 
feel indeed constrained to exclaim as we ponder 
it, " Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ; it is 
high, I cannot attain unto it ! " and yet I think 
we will feel also, that there are some things here 
which we may lay hold of, — some very precious 
things which we must not let slip ; for even this 
mystic and mysterious Apocalypse is " profitable 
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion in righteousness. " 

Come we, then, to the study of this passage, not 
as wise and learned men, but as little children, 
with ear attent and heart ready to receive the in- 
struction which it suggests ; and do Thou, O Spirit 
of all Truth, whose office it is to take of the things 
of Christ, and show them unto us, open now our eyes, 
that we may see wondrous things in Thy Word! 
234 



The Vision of the Throne. 235 

1. St. John was caught up as through an open 
door into heaven; "and behold, a throne set in 
heaven, and One sitting on the throne.' 1 I lind 
here a truth high and glorious. Above all the 
strife and discord and confusion of this world, 
above those thrones and dominions which carica- 
ture royalty and pervert justice, above the Neros 
and Domitians and all their brood of lesser tyrants, 
there is a Dominion, an Authority, a Throne which 
is Supreme. Let men say and do what they will, 
in heaven there is a throne, and it ruleth over all 
forevermore. The heathen may rage, and the 
people imagine a vain thing, but " the Lord God 
Omnipotent reigneth." Yes, in face of the cheer- 
less materialism and the black atheism of our 
time, we rest in the assurance that the world is 
not without a ruler; that it is not rolling on from 
age to age, like a ship without a pilot ; but that it 
has a Guide, a King, whose eternal throne is estab- 
lished on high. And on that throne, One is sitting. 

Far back in the feeble dawn of civilization, when 
polytheism, with all its superstitions, prevailed over 
the whole earth, there was one race of people, and 
only one, among whom this sublime truth of mono- 
theism was proclaimed: "Hear, O Israel, the 
Lord our God is one Lord." And now in the 
noonday of civilization and science, when man's 
conception of the extent of the universe has been 



236 The Vision of the Throne. 

enlarged to almost an infinite degree, when to the 
patient eye of the astronomer many doors have 
been opened in heaven, and in each of its thou- 
sand chambers suns and systems have been un- 
veiled, the Christian Church points to this vision of 
the apostle, and affirms that there is one throne, 
whence they all are governed, and one God, who 
sits on that throne. 

This conception of the universe as a unit, gov- 
erned from one centre and on one grand economy 
of law, is indeed the modern scientific conception. 
This is the proudest achievement of science, to 
have demonstrated the unity and universality of 
the great laws of the Kosmos. Step by step, 
science has passed from chaos to order, from the 
manifold to the simple, from phenomena to the 
laws which govern phenomena, and from these 
again to those great ultimate principles or forces 
which explain all law, until at last, in the doctrine 
of the correlation of forces, the topmost stone in 
the edifice has been laid, the last term in the 
series has been reached, and science has grasped 
the grand conception of one universal omni- 
present energy. We may say that in each sub- 
kingdom of nature the scientific seers have at last 
affirmed this unity as the result of their visions. 
The naturalist, the botanist, the chemist, the 
astronomer, the philosopher, all in one chorus 



The Vision of the Throne. 237 

declare of the several kingdoms of their investiga- 
tions, "I beheld a throne, and One sitting on the 
throne/' And from these separate conclusions, 
science has risen to the grand generalization that 
there is a higher kingdom which embraces all, 
which ruleth over all, and that One sitteth on that 
throne. 

But all these are only so many echoes of the truth 
embodied in the vision of the throne which St. John 
saw. The Christian Church has for nineteen cen- 
turies proclaimed as a revelation what science in the 
evening of the ages, by slow and painful induction, 
has at last demonstrated as a scientific truth, — the 
unity of cosmical law. And there is, moreover, 
this important difference between the two. Mod- 
ern science and philosophy (like those of ancient 
Greece), in the persons of a considerable propor- 
tion of its representatives, hold to a pantheistic 
monotheism, — a conception which is utterly des- 
titute of comfort or inspiration ; while the disciple 
of Christ beholds on the throne of the universe a 
personal Ruler, a personal God. 

2. Again : whereas St. John saw before the 
great throne "a sea of glass like unto crystal/' 
this, I suppose, was intended to express the " ma- 
jestic repose and ethereal majesty " of the throne of 
God. The thrones of earth rest on the troubled 
waves of a treacherous sea, — a sea which may at 



238 The Vision of the Throne. 

any moment be swept by the stormy wind and 
tempest, and beneath whose waves these thrones 
and dominions one by one disappear. But before 
the throne of God is " a sea of glass/' image of 
calmness and repose ; a sea whose smooth surface 
is never ruffled, whose transparent depths are 
never disturbed. Such is the government of God 
over His universe, not capricious, uncertain, or 
changeful, but "the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever." No storms can ruffle it, no tempests 
disturb it : it remains forevermore serene. 

3. Listen again to the record of the vision : 
" He that sat on the throne was to look upon like 
a jasper and a sardine stone." Here are particu- 
lars which concern the character of the Monarch 
of the universe. Two appearances are described, 
— the jasper, and the sardine or cornelian stone. 
The crystalline brightness of the one would seem 
to be a symbol of holiness, and the fiery red of the 
other a symbol of justice ; so that we have here 
set forth the truth, that He who sits upon the 
throne is a God of glorious holiness, and justice 
terrible. This description is intensified by the 
declaration that "out of the throne proceeded 
lightnings and thunderings and voices." 

That the Monarch and Ruler of the universe is 
a God of holiness and justice, is a truth of which 
the moral constitution of man bears abundant 



The Vision of the Throne. 239 

testimony, and upon which the moral order of 
society, of the world, and of all worlds, absolutely 
depends. And he who beholds on the throne a 
being other than this, is the victim of delusion. 
But it must be confessed, this is so far a vision, 
which sinful man cannot contemplate with other 
than feelings of apprehension and alarm. I turn 
my eyes toward that throne, and dazzled by the 
insufferable light of its holiness, awed by the fiery 
appearance of its justice, I exclaim, — 

" So vile am I, how dare I hope to stand 
In the pure glory of that heavenly land, 
Before the whiteness of that throne appear?" 

I see the lightnings leaping forth from the 
throne ; I hear the dreadful sound of the thunders 
and the articulate voices of justice and judgment; 
and like the prophet I cry, " Woe is me, for I am 
undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips ; . . . 
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of 
hosts." If this were all the vision, it were one 
which we would not willingly look upon. But it 
is not all, for the record proceeds, — 

4. " And there was a rainbow round about the 
throne, in sight like unto an emerald." Ah ! here 
is a feature of the vision, which, to us sinful men, 
must be of all others the most delightful to con- 
template. Is your eye dazzled by the jasper bright- 



240 The Vision of the Throne. 

ness of the holiness of Him that sitteth upon the 
throne ? Is your heart awed by the fiery appear- 
ance of His justice? Do you tremble at the 
lightnings and thunderings and voices which pro- 
ceed from the throne ? Then lift your eyes to the 
rainbow which encompasses the throne. It is in 
sight like unto an emerald. The predominating 
color is that which is most grateful and most rest- 
ful to the dazzled or wearied eye. (We need not 
wonder at this. Niebuhr and other travellers de- 
scribe white rainbows.) God set His bow in the 
sky as the sign of His covenant of mercy with 
Noah and his posterity ; and ever since, it has been 
to men the most beautiful and the most attractive 
object in the natural world, — a symbol of peace 
and blessing. Now, we may safely infer that He 
has given us this vision of the rainbow round the 
eternal and glorious throne on high, as a sign that 
His holiness and justice are ever encircled by His 
covenant of grace and mercy, of peace and recon- 
ciliation. 

Fidelity to truth requires us to preach to men 
the holiness and justice of God, and to forewarn 
them of His judgments upon the ungodly; but 
when we have done this, we are given the inesti- 
mable privilege of telling of the covenant of grace 
in Christ Jesus, whereby sin is forgiven and recon- 
ciliation assured to every one that believeth. Yes ! 



The Vision of the Throne. 241 

Though clouds and darkness are round about Him, 
though justice and judgment are the habitation of 
His throne, yet (blessed be His name!) there is 
a rainbow round about the throne. Thither let 
the trembling sinner's eye be turned, and let its 
soft and gentle radiance beam into his heart the 
assurance of grace, mercy, and peace from God 
the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. And 
we who are His disciples, and who cherish the 
hope of redemption through His blood — when 
hours of darkness and doubt come upon us ; when, 
overwhelmed by the sense of our unworthiness and 
our manifold short-comings, we are ready to de- 
spair of standing accepted before the throne of His 
holiness and glory, — let the memory of this vision 
come back to re-assure us, while we recall the 
words, " There is a rainbow round about the throne, 
in sight like unto an emerald. " 

But a question arises, which surely is a proper 
one to be asked and answered, What is the gene- 
sis of this rainbow ? 

When we see a bright bow spanning the heavens 
after a storm, we know its genesis ; when we stand 
beneath the great cataract of Niagara, and see the 
many rainbows formed, in the rising cloud of spray, 
each the arc of a different circle, from a different 
centre, or the circular horizontal iris lying on the 
surface of the water, in each case we can discover 



242 The Vision of the Throne. 

how the beautiful phenomenon was produced. 
Natural it is, then, to inquire what is the genesis 
of that rainbow round about the eternal throne ? 
How was it formed ? 

Now, we find no answer to this question in the 
passage before us. But when we consider the 
agency of the sun in the formation of the natural 
rainbow, and remember that Christ Jesus is spoken 
of in the lofty imagery of prophecy as the " Sun of 
Righteousness/' is it fanciful to conceive that the 
rays which form that heavenly rainbow which 
spans the great throne of God's holiness and jus- 
tice, proceed from Him? — from that same Jesus 
who said when on earth, " I am the light of the 
world " ? Yes, assuredly this is the genesis of that 
heavenly bow of promise, that covenant-sign of 
mercy. We find the cause of that beautiful phe- 
nomenon in the true heavens, in the incarnation, 
the atonement, and the perpetual intercession of 
the Son of God. 

In reaching this conclusion, the Scriptures them- 
selves lead us by the hand to the very end. For 
do they not say of our blessed Redeemer, " He is 
our hope ; " " He is our peace ; " and " God was in 
Christ — reconciling the world unto Himself ; " " in 
Him we have redemption through His blood, even 
the forgiveness of sins ; " and " through Him we 
have access by one spirit unto the Father;" "we 



The Vision of the Throne. 243 

have boldness to enter into the holiest, by the 
blood of Jesus " ? In the light of such words of 
the divine revelation as these, we can hold no other 
opinion, but that the bow of grace, mercy, and 
peace which encircles the throne of holiness and 
justice, is formed by the rays of light which pro- 
ceed from the manger, the cross, and the sepulchre 
of Christ. 

Thousands see the beautiful symbol of covenant- 
mercy around the throne, who have no true ideas, 
or at least very feeble and imperfect ideas, of its 
genesis ; even as the natural rainbow was admired 
by men for thousands of years before Antonio de 
Dominis discovered its true theory in 161 1. (He 
was archbishop of Spalatro, and became a Protes- 
tant, and died in a dungeon of the Inquisition 1622.) 
But assuredly we should be inexcusable, now that 
the gospel has revealed to us the true explanation 
of this bright symbol of peace, if we failed to rec- 
ognize in Christ Jesus its source and its cause. It 
is a confirmation of this view, that the apostle 
beheld in the midst of the throne, " A lamb, and 
it had been slain/' thus connecting the redeeming 
death of Christ with the glories of the eternal 
throne. 

5. One more feature of this vision I notice : 
" There were seven lamps of fire burning before 
the throne, which are the seven spirits of God." 



244 The Vision of the Throne. 

Here we have the symbol of the Holy Spirit in 
His sevenfold energy, — " the spirit of wisdom and 
understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly 
strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness 
and holyfear. ,, . . . Fire is His symbol, because it 
is His to enlighten the conscience, and to warm 
the affections, His also to purge and to purify, 
and His to judge and to consume. 

The vision would have been incomplete without 
this symbol of the Holy Ghost, "the Lord and 
Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and 
the Son, who, with the Father and the Son to- 
gether, is worshipped and glorified — who spake 
by the prophets," and who now abideth in the 
Church to guide, to comfort, to enlighten, to 
sanctify. The vision, I say, would have been in- 
complete, because its design clearly is to teach us, 
not only in the power of the Divine Majesty to 
worship the Unity, but also, by the confession of a 
true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the Eter- 
nal Trinity, or Tripersonality of the Deity. 

On that high and awful throne, " One was sit- 
ting." Nowhere is the unity of God so empha- 
sized, and never is the truth, that there is one God, 
and one only, so clearly and decisively maintained, 
as when the doctrine of the Trinity is confessed. 
But there is in this one God a threefold relation, — 
three subsistences in one substance, — as there is 



The Vision of the Throne. 245 

in man a threefold distinction of intellect and 
will and conscience, or, again, of body, soul, 
and spirit. 

So we see, in this vision, the Father and the 
Son and the Holy Ghost ; and in each of these 
self-revelations, the one God is brought very near 
to His creatures, each performing offices most 
gracious, most precious, most indispensable. 

6. Time does not permit me to dwell on what the 
apostle heard when rapt into the heavens; but I 
may simply say, he heard three hymns of praise, — 
first, a hymn in celebration of the Eternal Being of 
God, from the four living creatures, the cherubim, 
personal ministers (as I suppose) of the divine 
government. It was a perpetual Trisagion, — 
which ceased not day nor night, — " Holy, holy, 
holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is, and 
is to come." 

Then, secondly, a hymn in celebration of the 
Creation, from the four and twenty elders, repre- 
sentative of the Church in heaven and on earth, 
falling down before the Almighty, casting their 
crowns before the throne, and saying, "Thou art 
worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and 
power : for Thou hast created all things, and for 
Thy pleasure they are and were created." 

Then, thirdly, there follows a hymn in celebra- 
tion of the redemption. This is called "a new 



246 The Vision of the Throne. 

song;" and it is sung jointly by the four living 
beings and the twenty-four elders, falling down 
before the Lamb, and saying, " Thou art worthy, 
for Thou wast slain, and hast. redeemed men to God 
by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and 
people, and nation ; and hast made them unto our 
God kings and priests." 

At this, a general chorus of praise bursts from 
the circling hosts of angels, echoing the song of 
redemption, saying in a loud voice, " Worthy is 
the Lamb who was slain to receive power, and 
riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and 
glory, and blessing." And this again is caught up, 
and prolonged by a yet vaster throng, — " Every 
creature in heaven, and on the earth, and under 
the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that 
are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, 
and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth 
upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and 
ever." Thus this perpetual Trisagion and this 
triple hymn of praise are in harmony with the 
general character of the vision as a revelation of 
the Tri-Une-God. 

May we have grace to acknowledge the glory of 
the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the divine 
majesty to worship the Unity. And while heaven 
is vocal with the anthems of angels and archangels, 
cherubim and seraphim, and the vast host of the 



The Vision of the Throne. 247 

redeemed ; yea, while all creation pays its tribute 
of adoration, — let not our lips be dumb, but let ( 
every heart and every voice join in the everlast- 
ing Te Deum to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
Amen. 



XVII. 
THE TRANSFIGURATION. 

"And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his 
brother, aitd briiigeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was 
tra?tsfigured before them : and His face did shine as the sun, and His 
raiment was white as the light" — St. Matthew xvii. i, 2. 

THE recent general convention of our Church 
has added to the calendar a feast in commem- 
oration of the transfiguration of Christ, and assigned 
it to the sixth day of August. It is, however, 
rather a restoration than an addition, inasmuch as 
the Feast of the Transfiguration was observed in 
the Christian Church as early as the middle of the 
fifth century. 

Unlike other prominent events in the life of 
Christ, the Transfiguration finds no place in the 
ordinary cycle of art-representations in the early 
Christian Church. It is represented emblemati- 
cally in certain mosaics of the sixth and eighth 
centuries, but it was reserved for Raphael's immor- 
tal genius to portray it in a manner worthy of the 
subject. His noble picture in the Vatican was the 
apotheosis of his art ; but Death snatched the brush 

from his hand before it was finished, as if Provi- 
248 



The Transfiguration. 249 

dence would teach us that no human art or genius, 
no human tongue or pen, can sufficiently and com- 
pletely portray that sublime spectacle. In attempt- 
ing to speak to you to-night upon so lofty a theme, 
I confess that I am oppressed with a feeling of awe 
because of its majesty and its difficulty ; although, 
since it is a part of the revelation of the life of 
Christ, it is better that we should try at least to 
understand it, than that we should pass it by alto- 
gether. 

It was when the Master was in the neighborhood 
of Caesarea-Philippi, far away in the north of Pales- 
tine, that the event described in the text occurred. 
To any one visiting the spot, and seeing the stu- 
pendous form of snowy Hermon rising before him, 
till its summit has left the valley eleven thousand 
feet below, it appears almost certain, it is said, that 
this was the high mountain to which the Saviour 
led His chosen disciples when He would be trans- 
figured before them. Picture, then, to your mind 
what transpired. It is the Sabbath evening. Jesus, 
with Peter and James and John, begins the ascent. 
Through a scene of surpassing loveliness they wend 
their way. At every step the prospect expands, 
till at length a glorious panorama opens before 
them, " embracing a great part of Syria, from the 
sea to Damascus, from the Lebanon and the gorge 
of the Litany to the mountains of Moab ; or down 



250 The Transfiguration. 

the Jordan valley to the Dead Sea ; or over Gali- 
lee and Samaria, and on to Jerusalem/' all bathed 
in the splendors of the setting sun. But these 
sunset glories presently fade. Night falls. The 
stars one by one shine forth. The moon rises in 
silvery radiance, reflected back in dazzling beauty 
from the broad patches of snow on the mountain 
side. And now what do we see ? Jesus bowed in 
prayer there in the moonlight, His disciples pray- 
ing with Him a short distance apart, till, overcome 
by fatigue, they sink in slumber. But what sudden 
light is that which bursts forth upon the scene, hid- 
ing by its dazzling brilliancy all the glories of the 
moonlit night ? The disciples are wakened by the 
splendor, and their astonished eyes behold a mar- 
vellous sight. Jesus is transfigured before them. 
His face shines with the brightness of the noonday 
sun ; His raiment is white and glistering ; and as 
they gaze in a transport of awe, behold ! two shin- 
ing forms appear with Him in glory, whom they, by 
the intuition which is given to the spirit in moments 
of ecstasy, recognize to be none other than Moses 
and Elias, — Moses, the lawgiver and leader of 
God's ancient people; Moses, who had stood on 
the summit of Sinai, and talked with God ; and 
Elias, at whose word the heavens were shut and 
opened, who called down fire from heaven at will, 
and who was at last translated to heaven by a char- 



The Transfiguration. 2$i 

iot of fire : these two men — he does not call them 
angels, for the Bible distinguishes carefully be- 
tween glorified saints and angels — were seen talk- 
ing with Jesus concerning His decease, which He 
was to accomplish at Jerusalem. The apostles gaze 
in wonder and adoration, till presently there comes 
a bright cloud, which enwraps in its folds of light 
the three figures. It is the Shechinah, and the 
apostles fear as they see the face of Christ and 
the faces of Moses and Elias disappearing within 
it. And now from out that cloud of awful glory 
comes a voice, — the same that Moses heard on 
Sinai, the same of which the prophet Habakkuk 
said, " O Lord, I have heard Thy speech, and was 
afraid : . . . my lips quivered at the voice : rotten- 
ness entered into my bones, and I trembled in my- 
self," — saying, " This is My beloved Son, in whom 
I am well pleased ; hear ye Him." 

Such was the scene of the Transfiguration. If, 
now, we inquire as to its purpose, that inquiry 
branches into three. What was its intent touch- 
ing Jesus? What was its intent touching Moses 
and Elias? What was its intent touching Peter, 
James, and John ? To the first of these we answer, 
with humility, and yet with some degree of confi- 
dence, it was intended to strengthen and brace the 
spirit of Jesus Christ for the solemn and awful work 
which lay before Him, culminating in Gethsemane 



252 The Transfiguration. 

and Calvary. If it is true that He "learned obedi- 
ence by the things which He suffered/' if it is true 
that He was " made perfect through suffering," then 
we need not be surprised that at each step of His 
human development there came to him a deeper 
knowledge of the meaning and scope of His work, 
a clearer apprehension of His divine mission. If, 
again, an angel came to minister unto Him after 
the Temptation in the wilderness ; if another angel 
came to strengthen Him during the agony in Geth- 
semane, — we need not be surprised if the presence 
of Moses and Elias — if this whole scene of tran- 
scendent glory — gave strength and refreshment to 
the soul of our High Priest, as He girded Himself 
to enter into the valley of sacrifice and suffering. 

As regards the purpose of the Transfiguration 
with reference to Moses and Elias, it is difficult 
for us to speak with any degree of positiveness. 
Remembering, however, what St. Peter tells us, 
that the angels bend over the mystery of redemp- 
tion very much as the cherubim bent over the 
mercy-seat on the ark, desiring "to look into" its 
secret meaning, we may infer that glorified saints, 
such as Moses and Elias, must have felt the most 
earnest and absorbing desire to understand the 
mystery of the atonement which Christ was about 
to make for their sins, and for the sins of the whole 
world. For them the Transfiguration must have 



The Transfiguration. 253 

been a new revelation of the wisdom and glory of 
God, in the consummation of His eternal purpose to 
redeem a ruined world. To one of them, we may 
venture to say, it came as a long-deferred answer 
to a petition made more than a millennium before. 
Moses had dared to ask a great thing, when once 
the cloudy pillar descended, and rested at the door 
of the Tabernacle in the wilderness : " I beseech 
Thee," said he, "shew me Thy glory." And the 
Lord had answered, " Behold, there is a place by 
Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock : and it shall 
come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I 
will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover 
thee with My hand while I pass by : and I will take 
away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My back parts : 
but My face shall not be seen." But now the holy 
man of God is summoned from his rest in the spir- 
itual world, and, standing in the clift of the Rock 
of Ages, he beholds the very face of God, — the 
brightness of Jehovah's glory in the face of Jesus 
Christ. 

So far as the three apostolic witnesses of the 
Transfiguration were concerned, its intent is per- 
fectly clear. Bewildered by the strange announce- 
ment which had lately been made to them, that their 
Master, whom at last they had come to believe was 
" the Christ, the Son of the living God," was to 
be betrayed into the hands of wicked men, and 



254 The Transfiguration. 

crucified and slain, their faith was sorely tried, and 
was in danger of total eclipse. They could not 
grasp the conception of a suffering Messiah. It 
was an offence to them. It seemed utterly at vari- 
ance with the glorious offices predicted of Him, 
utterly inconsistent with the divine glory which 
they had seen already in the person and works of 
Jesus. And so they are taken up into the holy 
Mount, and shown the great lawgiver and the 
great prophet of Israel engaged in ecstatic con- 
verse with their glorified Master concerning the 
decease which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. 
The lesson was plain ; they had misread the proph- 
ecies : the Messiah of Moses and the prophets 
must be a suffering, dying Messiah. And this 
Jesus, whom they are almost ready to forsake, 
because He tells them He is to die the shameful 
death of the cross, God the Father, on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, crowns with honor and glory, 
" because of the suffering of death," saying, " This 
is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; 
hear ye Him." 

Let us now draw a little nearer to this myste- 
rious scene, and ask ourselves what is its signifi- 
cance ? 

i. In the first place it marks the topmost step 
in the progressive glorification of the manhood of 
Jesus Christ. His incarnation and His whole life 



The Transfiguration. 255 

upon earth was a humiliation ; but side by side 
with that humiliation, there was going on a process 
of glorification. From the time when the star led 
the wise men of the East to the spot where Jesus 
was born, down to the moment when He was 
transfigured before the disciples, His person had 
been the centre of a widening circle of epiphanies, 
manifesting forth the glory which was progres- 
sively unfolded within the Tabernacle of His 
humanity. Angels and shepherds and sages, 
prophets, priests, and holy women of God, uttered 
the praise of the Infant Christ. He increased in 
wisdom. He grew to man's estate. On the banks 
of the Jordan, the Baptist pointed to Him as the 
Lamb of God. When He went to His baptism, 
the heavens were opened, and there came a voice 
heard by Himself alone, and designed for His in- 
struction alone, saying, "Thou art My beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased." At the same 
spot the Holy Ghost descended and rested upon 
Him, in bodily semblance like a dove. Then, when 
taught by the heavenly vision He had entered into 
the full realization of His divine Sonship, He 
wrought miracle after miracle, and manifested 
forth His glory, till at length there came the great 
confession of Peter, " Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God." And now, last of all, and as 
the crown of all these epiphanies of His unfolding 



256 The Transfiguration. 

glory, comes the transfiguration on the holy 
Mount, marking, as I have said, the topmost step in 
His progressive glorification. — What is it that we 
see, my brethren, when in thought we transport 
ourselves to the slope of Hermon, and stand with 
the apostles while Jesus is transfigured ? The 
fashion of His countenance is altered ; His face 
shines with a radiance like the sun itself ; His rai- 
ment becomes white and glistering. It is as if 
that divine glory which He had with the Father 
before the world was, and which He had put off, as 
a king puts off his crown, when He stooped to re- 
deem the world, was now again circling His brow. 
It is as if that " Form of God," which had been 
His from eternity, and which He had laid aside 
when He entered upon His work of redemption to 
take " the form of a servant," He now resumed. 
It is as if the Father had for this one moment of 
His earthly career put upon His shoulders again 
the robes of His glory and of His Deity, that Moses 
and Elias might worship Him as the eternal Son 
of God. But we shall, I think, come nearer to the 
true reading of this scene if we regard this glori- 
fication of Jesus on the Mount as the natural 
apotheosis of His consecrated humanity. In that 
case the Transfiguration will mark the normal de- 
velopment of a godly and a holy life in the person 
of the spotless Son of Man. He rose to that 



The Transfiguration. 257 

height of glory on Mount Hermon because of the 
inner power of His holy life, because of the trans- 
figuring virtue of His consecrated soul ; and when 
we behold Him irradiated with light, " clothing 
Himself with light as with a garment," and stand- 
ing with glorified saints, we witness the natural 
climax of His holy and spotless humanity. And 
now see the doors of eternal glory open before the 
Son of Man : He has only to enter in, to step up 
from the summit of Hermon into the presence of 
God Himself, and to sit down in glory forever ! 
But instead of this, what does He do ? He puts 
aside this possible glorification ; He comes down 
from the Mount of Transfiguration ; He leaves all 
that glory which He might have had with the 
angels of God and the glorified saints, and de- 
scends into the valley of humiliation, into this 
desert of sin and sorrow and suffering, into the 
dark and gloomy depths of Gethsemane and Cal- 
vary, in order to redeem a world ! 

2. The Transfiguration may be looked upon as 
the inauguration of the New Covenant. As on 
rugged Sinai was inaugurated the law which proved 
a ministration of death, so on snowy Hermon, 
amid a scene of exquisite natural beauty, was inau- 
gurated the gospel by that voice from the excellent 
glory. 

Look once more at what occurred on the Mount : 



258 The transfiguration. 

there is the venerable representative of the ancient 
law in the person of Moses ; there is the majestic 
figure of Elijah, representing the noble company 
of the prophets ; and these two are seen in no an- 
tagonism to Christ, but in perfect harmony with 
Him, teaching us thereby that the Old Testament 
and the Old Economy, the law of Moses and all 
that pertained thereto, led up to, and prepared the 
way for, the New Dispensation of grace, mercy, and 
peace which was in Christ Jesus our Lord. More- 
over, these two representatives, one of the law, and 
the other of the prophets, are manifestly in a posi- 
tion of subordination to Christ. They appear as 
His attendant ministers, at once to bear witness to 
Him, and to learn from Him the mystery of re- 
demption. It is most significant, that just as the 
voice comes from above, declaring Jesus Christ to 
be the beloved Son of God, in whom He is well 
pleased, Moses and Elias vanish from the sight of 
the apostles. The law and the prophets give way to 
Christ and His New Dispensation. " Christ is the 
end of the law." "The testimony of Jesus is the 
spirit of prophecy." Having borne their testimony, 
those holy men disappear, leaving "Jesus only," 
as at once the Prophet, the Priest, and the King of 
His Church. The voice of God proclaims Him 
the Head and Lord of all. "Hear ye Him." 
You have heard and obeyed Moses, you have 



The Transfiguration. 259 

heard and obeyed the prophets : now hear and 
obey Christ the Son of God. " God, who by 
divers portions and in divers manners spake in 
times past to the fathers by the prophets, hath at 
the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son." 
Surely, here on the summit of the Mount of the 
Transfiguration one cannot but see the inaugura- 
tion of the New Dispensation of grace, mercy, and 
peace in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. 

3. But, again, the Transfiguration represents to 
us the investiture of Jesus Christ as High Priest. 
You remember, that, acting under divine direction, 
Moses had prepared for the high priest of that older 
dispensation certain sacred robes, — the robe and 
the ephod made of blue and gold and scarlet and 
fine linen, with, its onyx stones set in the shoulder, 
upon each of which there were graven the names 
of six of the tribes of Israel ; and then the breast- 
plate, with its twelve precious stones, each bearing 
the name of one of the tribes ; that when the high 
priest entered into the high place, he might bear 
on his shoulders and on his heart the names of 
the people of God. 

Now, if you consider that the evangelist says 
not only that the face of Christ did shine as the 
sun, but that His raiment was changed, and became 
white and glistering, the thought suggests itself 
that the Father was now robing His Son in the 



260 The Transfiguration. 

1 m 

sacred garments of His holy priesthood in which 
He was to offer the great sacrifice for the sins of 
the whole world, and, bearing upon His heart the 
names of His people, to pass through the veil — that 
is to say, His flesh — into the Holy of holies in the 
heavens, now to appear in the presence of God for 
us. It is confirmatory of this view, that the promi- 
nent subject, in fact the only subject, of conversa- 
tion between Christ and these heavenly visitants 
from the spiritual world, was His agony and bloody 
sweat, His cross and passion, which He was to 
accomplish in Jerusalem. And if you will care- 
fully study the narrative, you will find that from 
this point on to the end, Christ's prophetical office 
appears to recede more and more, while His priestly 
office comes into prominence. From Hermon He 
descended into the valley of humiliation, and moved 
right on to the altar of sacrifice, even His cross 
on Calvary. Invested on the Mount with the gar- 
ments which symbolized His heavenly and divine 
priesthood, from this time His face is toward Jeru- 
salem, — toward the altar of sacrifice, where He 
was to make the great atonement for the sins of 
the whole world. 

4. This leads me to remark that the Transfigura- 
tion is above all designed to exhibit to us the 
transcendent value of the sufferings and death of 
Christ. I have already called your attention to 



The Transfiguration. 261 

the fact that it was of " His decease which He was 
to accomplish at Jerusalem," that Moses and Elias 
spake with Christ upon the holy Mount. Those 
heavenly visitants, coming down to earth for a 
brief space from the realms of light and peace 
and rest, were absorbed in the contemplation of 
one event, and that event was the death of Christ. 
In the Basilica at Ravenna, there is a mosaic of 
the sixth century representing in emblematical 
form the Transfiguration of Christ, — a jewelled 
cross set in a circle of blue studded with golden 
stars, in the midst of which appears the face of 
Christ, the Saviour of the world ; while from the 
cloud close by is thrust forth a divine hand that 
points to the cross. Those early artists were right 
in their reading of this sublime event. The Trans- 
figuration sets the cross of Christ in the centre, 
surrounds it with a radiant firmament of God's 
promises and of the prophecies of the Old Testa- 
ment, and shows us the hand of God Himself, 
emerging from the cloud of glory, and pointing to 
the cross, as though God the Father would say 
to man what John the Baptist said, " Behold the 
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world." The value of the cross of Christ, — this 
is the central truth of the Transfiguration ; a truth 
which the Church can never afford for one instant 
— I will not say to forget, or to lose sight of, but — 



262 The Transfiguration. 

to permit to be blurred or obscured in the faintest 
degree. Thank God that our own Church has set 
on high this doctrine of a crucified Redeemer! 
Every time we gather round the holy table of our 
Lord, to celebrate the mysteries of His death, we 
are taught that Christ "made there, on the cross, 
by His one offering of Himself, a full, perfect, and 
sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for 
the sins of the whole world. " As we stand on the 
Mount of the Transfiguration, then, and see in 
thought what the apostles saw in fact, we seem to 
catch the echo of the words of Saul of Tarsus, 
" God forbid that I should glory save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. ,, 

5. I pass on to point out the prophetic signifi- 
cance of the Transfiguration. Standing on Hermon 
with these three apostles, a long vista stretches 
out before us into the distant future, including in 
its scope that great day when the Son of God shall 
take to Himself His power, His mighty power, in 
order to reign. His kingdom has come at last ; 
and what is the manner of it ? It is a kingdom 
of redeemed men, — of men who stand like Moses 
and Elias with Christ in glory, not only redeemed, 
not only delivered from sin and suffering and sor- 
row and trial and pain, but transformed and trans- 
figured with that same glory by which the person 
of Jesus is inwrapped. Yes, these glorified saints 



The Transfiguration. 263 

on the holy Mount represent the glorified Church 
of the Redeemed. They have left death arid cor- 
ruption and decay behind. Their very bodies are 
transfigured, according to that great word of the 
apostle, " Who shall change this body of our hu- 
miliation, and fashion it like unto the body of His 
glory ? " Daniel, the prophet, long centuries before 
Christ, predicted the resurrection, — "some -to 
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
contempt, " — and he adds, " They that be wise 
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament." 
The Master also Himself, speaking of that coming 
kingdom, said, " Then shall the righteous shine 
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father ; " 
and St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, " When 
Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye 
also appear with Him in glory ; " and in the Rev- 
elation of St. John we hear the voice of the glori- 
ous Lord Himself in language which carries with 
it a reminiscence of the scene on the Mount : 
"They shall walk with Me in white ; for they are 
worthy." Thus the transfigured body of Jesus 
Christ is the image of the transfiguration of the 
bodies of all the redeemed in the kingdom and 
glory of our Father. For " this body of our hu- 
miliation " shall not inherit the kingdom in its 
present form of flesh and blood, with all its imper- 
fections, but "shall be changed," shall be trans- 



264 The Transfiguration, 



formed, shall be transfigured after the pattern and 
example of the body of Christ's glory. 

6. Finally, the Transfiguration has a symbolic 
as well as a prophetic import. It symbolizes the 
transformation and transfiguration of our spirits, 
our whole reasonable, moral, and spiritual nature 
into the image of Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Paul 
says, addressing himself to Christian people, " Be 
not conformed to this world, but be ye trans- 
formed." This last word is the same used by the 
evangelist in describing the Transfiguration ; ' and 
it might be rendered, " Be ye transfigured, — be ye 
transfigured by the renewing of your mind." We 
find the same word in that great passage in the 
second Epistle to the Corinthians: "We all, be- 
holding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are 
transfigured into the same image from glory to 
glory." So, as I gaze at the transfigured Christ, 
I am taught that I, too, ought to be transfigured 
— my life, my affections, my aims, my hopes, my 
aspirations, both " the hidden man " of the heart 
and the outward visible life — transfigured into 
the image of Christ. I ought to put off "the old 
man" with his deeds, and to put on "the new 
man," which, after God, is created in righteousness 
and true holiness. 

1 Both the Authorized and the Revised Versions fail to bring out this 
correspondence in either of the passages quoted. 



The Transfiguration. 265 

Let me now, from a number of impressive les- 
sons which the subject affords, gather three or 
four. And the first is this : if we desire to behold 
the glory of the transfigured Redeemer, we must 
climb with Him the mount of prayer. Jesus led 
His disciples up the slope of Hermon " to pray." 
It was not the whole people of Israel that beheld 
the Transfiguration of Christ ; nor even the twelve 
apostles, but a chosen few ; and these few must 
gird up their loins, and follow Him up the holy 
Mount. My brother, do you desire to behold Jesus 
Christ transfigured ? Go, then, climb the steep 
ascent of prayer and holy contemplation. Gird up 
your loins for an arduous and toilsome path. Put 
forth all your energies. Concentrate your thoughts. 
Go with your Lord apart from the world, and in 
the silence and solitude of the mountain-top you 
shall behold His glory. You will never see in 
Jesus any thing save a human teacher, or, at best, 
you will never understand His glory except as a 
theory, or as a mere dogma of the intellect, until 
in fervent prayer, and deep and earnest contempla- 
tion, you follow Him on to the Mount of Trans- 
figuration. 

Learn also from this great scene on Hermon the 
metamorphfc power of prater. As Jesus prayed, 
He was transfigured. Had He not prayed, He 
would not have been transfigured. Even the holy 



266 The Transfiguration. 

Jesus could only be transfigured as the result of 
fervent prayer. Consider, therefore, the metamor- 
phic, transfiguring power of a life of prayer. The 
face of Moses is not the only one which has shone 
with a light caught upon the Mount from long com- 
munion with God. St. Stephen is not the only 
faithful witness of Christ upon whose features a life 
of prayer has stamped an angelic impress. There 
are holy men and women, even in this our practical 
age, and amid the practical duties of life, whose 
faces have caught a radiance from above, whose 
spirits are manifestly transformed, who already in 
this mortal life are seen walking with Christ in the 
white robes of self-renouncing, self-forgetting love. 
If we ask the secret of this new transfiguration, 
the answer can only be, They are men and women 
who breathe the atmosphere of fervent prayer. 
And many a time in the case of departing saints 
we behold this metamorphic power of prayer, — 
behold it with the eye of sense. I have seen the 
face of a dying servant of Christ lit up, whether 
by a light from the unseen world, or by a radiance 
shining out from within, I could not tell ; but in 
either case, it was a kind of transfiguration which 
only those attain who have been often with Jesus 
on the mountain-top of prayer. 

Another lesson which comes out distinctly here 
is, that consecration to the path of suffering is the 



The Transfiguration. 267 

preparation for transfiguration. Brethren, how 
much of suffering and of sorrow is there in this 
world ! and how prone are we to think it 
strange, yea mysterious, that God's chosen and 
faithful people should be required to tread that 
path ! Study this transfiguration scene, and you 
will perceive that His consecration to the path of 
suffering was, for Jesus Christ, the preparation for 
His Transfiguration. It was immediately after 
He had taken His disciples apart, and told them 
of His purpose to go up to Jerusalem to suffer and 
to die : it was then, while His soul was stirred to 
its depths in the contemplation of His passion, that 
Jesus was transfigured on the Mount. So have 
we seen it, how often in human life, — some faith- 
ful servant of God treading the path of suffering, 
of affliction, and of sorrow, and we could not under- 
stand it, till God showed us that He was, by that 
means, preparing His servant for being transfigured 
after the image of Christ ! And as the years have 
rolled by, we have seen how suffering has wrought 
upon that countenance the likeness of the Master, 
and have been constrained to confess that the 
glorious image of Christ would not otherwise have 
been developed in this servant of God. Oh the mys- 
tery of suffering, the mystery of sorrow, the mystery 
of bereavement ! Oh the mystery of loneliness and 
of affliction in this world ! But see, it vanishes like 



268 The Transfiguration. 

the morning mist, as we discover that they who 
tread the path of suffering are preparing for the 
Mount of Transfiguration. This interprets for us 
the apostles' assurance that " our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 

In conclusion, let us learn from this scene on 
the Mount the true relation of the contemplative 
to the active life. Peter would fain have taken up 
his abode on a spot so near to heaven. He would 
build there three tabernacles, to detain the heav- 
enly visitants with Jesus. " It is good to be here," 
said he. But he wist not what he said. They must 
descend — Jesus and His disciples — to do the work 
which the Father had appointed them. Already at 
the foot of the Mount there was an afflicted father 
with his demoniac boy, waiting to be healed. What 
a lesson is there here for us ! We cannot spend our 
lives on the mountain-top of vision, or of ecstasy, or 
of contemplation. " It is good to be here," says 
the mystic, " beholding the vision of the glory of 
God." " It is good to be here," says the ascetic, 
" apart from the world, disciplining the soul, striving 
to attain purity of heart." " It is good to be here," 
says the student, " revelling in the contemplation 
of the Divine, beholding the glory of God in his- 
tory, in philosophy, in revelation." But we may 
not thus spend our lives. The voice of God calls 



The Transfiguration. 26g 

us down to grapple with the problems and' the 
duties which wait on every side. Sin is here ; sor- 
row is here; darkness is here ; -unbelief is here. 
If God has revealed to us the glory of His Son, it 
is not that we should give our lives up to its con- 
templation, but that we should gain thereby inspi- 
ration and strength to tread the path of duty or of 
suffering, — that we should consecrate ourselves to 
the work of lightening the darkness, and lessening 
the suffering, and cleansing the defilement, of the 
world in which we live. 



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